One website or multiple websites

[paulfoz1609]

Im going round in circles with the best way to go about marketting my business from an SEO and usability stand point.  My company specialise in self adhesive films and vinyls which give us quite a varied niche.

Our main areas are:

Window films and interior vinyls such as printed wallpaper, wall coverings, furniture wraps etc for homes and businesses - For this area we cover nationwide

Automotive films such as car window tinting, car and van wraps and paint protection films - for this we need the vehicles bringing to us so this is a more local are (around 20 miles of us max)

Signs and graphics - anything from office signs, pavement signs to printed banners - these are all commercial and we go to the customer.  For this its a new side to the business and Id say wed look to go withing 50 miles of our base.

My dilemma is, firstly when pushing social media etc we have a real divide for who we target as we have the home owers and business owners on one hand and then car enthusiasts on the other.  Also from an SEO point of view theres the local vs nationwide aspect.  A few people I have spoken to have said trying to target local for some services and national for others may be a little problematic.

I have some people saying have all services under one domain as the links back to the site and content will all help the site to rank better.  This sounds logical to me.

But then Ive had other people saying split the site into 2/3 sites.  Definitely split the automotive which is local from the other national areas as these are also going to be a different audience 9car enthusiasts vs home/business owners).  It will mean doing two lots of SEO but the sites will be more focused on the target audience and we can have one tagret local search and the other national. This too seems very logical.

My gut feeling is that both options are sort of right but doesn anyone have any advice that could help me figure this out.

Also to make things a little more complicated we have an ecommerce side were we supply goods direct to the public.  Woudl I be better to have a fresh domain which is simply an ecommerce platform or have a seperate shop section on my main domain were people can go to buy the products if they dont want us to fit them?

[MiriamEllis]

It's great to see you working though your thoughts and options here, Paul, with the help of our community. Keep up the good work, everybody!

[paulfoz1609]

Thanks Miriam, thats give me some food for thought.  Its great to hear different pros and cons for each way.  Whilst Im sure I could make both ways work Im trying to find the best way for it to work.  When I first looked at this it was the option you discussed here.  I brought a brand domain and was looking to set my self up as the go to place for self adhesive films and vinyls.  As the project went on, after lots of reasearch and chats with others, my doubts started to come in

This local and national causing problems for each other started to really concern me as it seems to hold some weight.  its good to hear from you that it may not be as big of a problem that I think.

It would be good to hear any other views.

My options seem to be:

One site with an with all services, half of which are local services targetting the automotive industry and half are national tagetting home/business owners

Pros
Easier to build a brand
Less SEO efforts needed
No need for a second address for local citations

Cons
Difficult to target social media posts - some people will want to see car related posts and others posts on interior design/home improvement

or

Two sites - one targeting the automotive local services and the other targetting the home/business owner and national services

Pros
Will be easu to target content on social media and blogs as wed have two sites and two lots of social media
May be easier to rank one for local search and take a bit of time to rank the other for national
The sites would be more focused as a smaller niche - all posts to the one site would be vehicle related and the other would be business/home improvement related so all links would be closer to the niche.

Cons
SEO may be more time consuming and costly
May need a second address/company to seperate the business in googles eyes

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Paul,

When done correctly, Local SEO shouldn't hinder your national ranking efforts, but the fictitious suite approach is not a good idea, for a couple of reasons:

1. Google is quite able to identify that both businesses belong to you and they could decide what you are doing is spamming them (trying to make a single business appear like multiple businesses).

2. Post-Possum, you'd be likely to have the suite B result filtered out of the local packs, anyway.

So, really not worth it.

Your scenario is complex, and one in which it would be advisable to have a professional consultant who can evaluate your total situation. Knowing just the bare bones of your business model, it sounds to me like what you may need to focus on is brand building. Think about a massive company like McDonald's. When I look them up from my location in the US, I get their corporate site, from which I can buy things (like a gift card - so, analogous to your e-commerce scenario). I also get a local pack featuring their fast food locations near me (the local side of their business).

Now, imagine if instead of just being McDonald's, they had decided to be McDonald's Breakfast, McDonald's Big Mac and McDonald's Headquarters. Maybe this would help them to rank for different things, but consolidation is what has enabled them to be known for everything they offer under a single brand.

This may not be the right approach for every business under the sun, and after consulting with a professional, you could decide that you wish to legally brand, operate and market multiple businesses, but I always find it useful to look at "the big guys" and see how they became household words. No - you likely don't have the resources of McDonald's at your disposal, but you're hoping your own brand will become as recognized and profitable as possible. If you divvy your dreams up into different sections, can you eventually build the same recognition that you might have with a single push?

Tough questions, I know, but definitely worth full thought!

[paulfoz1609]

Thanks, this makes a lot of sense too.  It's something Id briefly considered but not knowing a massive amount about how citations work I wasnt too sure if it would cause an issue.  One thought I had was whether to split the unit into two and effectively have Unit A and then the address and Unit B then the same address for each site.  I added this under lcal strategy as the automotive side of things is very local.  Its just the other side of the business that deals with residential and commercial businesses is national.  Local works good but we wouldnt really got enough local work to sustain it as its a bit more of a smaller niche market.  Im a little worried about spoiling my national works chances of succeeding by having everything under one roof.  Then theres also the ecommerce side of things which we have.  Would this cause an issue with the local searches as its very much national sales.  In fact we can post worldwide although 95% of sales are to the UK.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Paul,

Thumbs up on EGOL's good advice. I'll just add here that, as you've chosen "Local Strategy" as one of your categories for this thread, I strongly advocate the single site approach. Local SEO is centered on physical location, not product menu. So, if you've got 1 location in a city, then you'll want just 1 one website and 1 set of citations representing that location. You do not want to put your NAP (name, address, phone) on multiple websites as it can auto-generate citation inconsistency, undermining local ranking efforts. So, highly recommending the single site approach to you, specifically if the business has a local component.

[paulfoz1609]

Thanks

[EGOL]

If you are going to split part of the site off,  the auto makes the most sense since it is local.  Usually local is much easier to rank for than national, but that depends upon the competition in your geographic and product areas.

[paulfoz1609]

Thanks, that makes sense.  Would I be better to just have everything under the one domain or still have seperate domains but put all my SEO efforts into just one of the sites until that ranks well and then concentrate on the other domain?

Just wondering if splitting the sites would be better in the long run or not?

[EGOL]

To become visible in the SERPs, and to make money from those rankings, requires a lot of work.   If you split your time between multiple sites a lot more time will be required to bring any of your sites into money-making rankings.

So, until you have a site that is dominant in its SERPs, the best use of your time is probably to spend all of your energy and resources into a single site.

Once you have a site that is dominant in your niche, you can then afford a second site - and use the original site to give it a few links and get it ranking.