Creating a Wordpress Multi-site - Should I have separate Domains or use Subdirectories?
-
Hello,
I have a company building out a website and wanted to get the community opinion on how we should set-up the domain network (separate domains or subdirectories).
Our company has several locations across the country and really act as their own entity in those locations (Austin, Norman, College Station, etc.). Currently, we have all the locations under 1 domain like so... maindomain.com/our-locations/norman. This clearly isn't they way it should be set-up and it was done a long time ago, so we are changing to either:
- Separate Domains already purchased
- Subdirectories such as maindomain.com/norman
I would like to know what would be the best strategy for our communities in regards to SEO?
Thanks!
-
Hi Tyler
You would simply direct the traffic to each of the folders/cities so the cost of Adwords could easily be assigned to each separate office.
There is nothing else to worry about
Regards
Nigel
-
Hi Tyler,
Can you be more specific? What types of issues?
-
Thank you! That makes sense to me on the SEO side.
Any domain issues when it comes to AdWords tracking?
Thanks!
-
Hi Tyler,
I second Nigel's vote for the single domain approach. In a nutshell, it's nearly always better to build your brand on a single website than to try to spread your efforts across multiple websites. Local SEO best practice is to stick with a single domain on which you build out the necessary pages to reflect your various branches, linking to them from a high level menu or a combination of a store locator widget + an accessible html menu somewhere on the site so that you can be sure these pages get indexed.
-
Hi Tyler
You should go with the second option. It is by far the best for SEO. Have the main company information on the main site and then have the different locations as a first sub-directory as you have written it:
Make sure that the new city pages are rich with local information - drop in a photo of the city centre with an alt tag 'Norman' - talk about the main attractions of the town and flesh out the pages with contextually rich local information. Don't simply copy content from the main site as the duplicated content will drag the page down SERPS. If you do this correctly you will have a very good chance of ranking No.1 for your service + City in search.
Don't even think about setting up domains for each city - in fact, go and sell/delete them now!
I hope that helps - oh and don't forget to use Google my business to set up Googe local for all locales! and get plenty of local citations for each city. It should really rock if you do that!
Regards Nigel
Carousel Projects
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google+ Brand Account Separate from Google My Business
Hi everyone, I tried to create a Google+ account from a client's Google My Business, but found that 'Enable Google+' is no longer available on the sidebar of the GMB dashboard. I used this tutorial to do that before - http://onlineownership.com/create-google-page-connected-google-business-page/ An update on that article: Update: 31st October 2017
Local Listings | | nhhernandez
Google My Business has confirmed that enabling a G+ business page will no longer be available. Users will need to now create a G+ Brand page for their business on G+. My question is: If we create a separate G+ Brand page, are we still able to tie it up with GMB or are they going to be completely different platforms? On the dashboard for our older clients we have a list that goes like: Your Business is Live on Google View on Search View on Maps View on Google+ In light of this new change. Do we still really have to bother creating G+ brand pages? It seems like the newly launched Google Posts is more user-friendly and easier to update. The posts could be created on GMB and it's going to appear on searches within the local knowledge graph. Thoughts?1 -
Home Page not Ranking on Local Community Sites
I am helping out with a couple of community sites and am seeing the same problem on both. They are small non-commercial local websites. One has 5 or 6 relevant links to the home page, and the title tag and content have been optimised for the name of the group and the location (and in any case the phrase is completely non-competitive). The other one has few links and isn't optimised. Both sites are fairly new. Both sites have the same problem in that when you search for the name of the group, it is not the home page that comes up but another page. My experience is mainly in the more competitive commercial arena, so I thought that these community sites would be simple! Can anyone point me in the right direction as to why this might be? No spammy links on either. These are community sites that are not particularly well maintained, but the phrases I am searching for are non-competitive. I have checked that the home pages are not no-indexed. Any tips much appreciated!
Local Listings | | Wagada0 -
2 Domains
Hi, one of my clients owns a dental practice. The business is split into 2 parts. One is general dentistry and the other in cosmetic dentistry. They are both aimed at different markets. The question is, should we have 1 website with all the details for the business under, or could we have two domains and promote both sites differently. Does anyone see any issues with the address being the same etc? Thanks Ade
Local Listings | | popcreativeltd0 -
YP.com cloning my site! Will this hurt my original content?
Client was in an obscene YP.com contract. Now they are cloning the site I built for client, inserting the phone number that gives them credit for the leads. It's harvesting content immediately, loading pages I created just today. Client site : http://www.shephearstmeadows.com/
Local Listings | | jacksonmc
YP clone: http://www.awomansway.calls.net/ Is it possible this is hurting the site's score as source of original content? Anyone know how to stop it? Thank you,2 -
Why would a domain rank well in some markets and poorly in others?
We are having an issue with our SERP results. Basically here is what’s happening. We offer training in 47 cities. Our main sales page is [http://example.com/product/city-name]. Whenever we change our location preferences in Google, and that URL format is the landing page for our main 3 keywords, we rank no worse than 15. Most of those are on the first page. However, if that is not the landing page in the SERPs, we rank poorly. Depending on which keyword is used, one of three URLs will ALWAYS appear instead of the desired city-specific landing page, and we rank somewhere between pages 6 and 9. The other landing pages, depending on which keyword is used, are http://example.com (home page), http://example.com/product (without the city), or http://example.com/product/san-francisco (regardless of how close this is). Out of the 141 keywords, there have been between 9-25 keywords that have this issue. Having all 3 of these keywords in the top 10 for each city is the number one priority from our CEO. We have noticed if a page starts moving down the ranks, once it goes past 15, the landing page changes. Anyone have any ideas what could be causing this, or how to fix it? Any insight into this is much appreciated!
Local Listings | | PM_Academy0 -
Multiple Domain optimization
Hello all, I'm a bit new to this, though I'd like to think I'm a fast learner when it comes to IT related stuff...as I've been doing it for long enough. Here's my question. I have a non-profit corporation that covers a small region referred to as "Upper Cape" which covers four towns (mashpee, sandwich, falmouth, bourne). I have a direct competitor in each town who has a domain that contains the name of the town. Being that I'd like to optimize across the four towns, I've decided to also purchase up 4 domain names that contain the towns. Rather than forward the domains to the upper cape domain, I've cloned instances of word press containing my data across 4 different sites that contain the towns.
Local Listings | | UpperCapeSpartans
As I got to thinking about this...I thought that it might actually hurt me...looking for insight and help as to how best to do this to optimize search (and be found) across these four towns.0 -
Can we use different names in Google places for each location of a business?
I have a client who has several locations for their business. The company and the original location have one name - let's call it "National Clinic". Then, they have a series of urgent care clinics, named with the structure "National Clinic Urgent Care: Main St." and "National Clinic Urgent Care: Central Plaza". The When I'm creating my directory listings, for the urgent care locations, which option would you use for the name? a) National Clinic
Local Listings | | irapasternack
b) National Clinic Urgent Care
c) National Clinic Urgent Care: Main St.0 -
Site: operator and GWT mismatch
On using the site: operator for our site on Google search, I see a large drop in total results. We had around 900,000 pages till yesterday and now I see this number around 350,000! The funny thing is that on GWT, I see that we have 725,000 pages submitted in sitemaps and around 645,000 of these are indexed! Not sure if this is a blip in Google and related to a huge drop in the structured data that we are also seeing in GWT! In addition, there seems to be a drop in rankings on a number of keywords that we were ranking on as well. For reference, the site is mycity4kids.com TIA, Asif
Local Listings | | prsntsnh0