One company, two audiences. Ok to make two sites?

[Gabe_BlueGuru]

I have researched and researched on this question, and I'm still not satisfied. Most of the answers on the Moz forum and otherwise are all from 2013, as well. So, I thought I'd bring it up again.

I have two distinct audiences for a real estate business I'm working with (very different needs and interests):

• Farm Buyers
• Residential Buyers

My client is wanting to expand their presence in the farm market. Their main competitor is ranking for, more or less, an exact domain name match. They want to spin up a site focused only on farm buyers. Here are the pros/cons in my mind of creating a separate site:

• Pros: Reaching/targeting a specific audience (better user experience), having domain name with keywords (I won't keyword stuff...promise), a site completely devoted to content regarding farms, a blog completely devoted to farms (we have a content strategy in place)
• Cons: NAP issues (same address), splitting up domain authority, a bit of brand confusion (though the same logo/brand will be on both sites)

In my mind, the pros outweigh the cons. Any ideas on how to address the cons? I could just not include address and phone, but that seems ridiculous...catering to the bots and not the user.

Thanks, everyone!
Gabe

[MiriamEllis]

Hey Gabe,

Great topic, and those competitors with EMDs outranking one are seriously aggravating. You've done a really good job of brainstorming the pros and cons. Pretty much 100% of the time, I advocate for a single site approach. The potential for brand building, authority building, ease of management and protection from the ever-changing whims of Google's filters make this the smart choice. Some things to ask the client, which I'm going to pretend is called R&B Realty:

1. Won't it be easier for you to build awareness of R&B serving all realty needs, than to expect consumers to somehow remember that they should go to rbfarmrealestate.com or rbhomesforsale.com? Don't you just want them to think of RBrealty.com for all of their needs?

2. Is there anything about the present domain that is ruling out building awesome farm-related content? For example is the domain something like homesforsalechicago.com right now? If so, could it be that you do need to purchase a new domain, but that it needs to be a branded domain that can encompass all present and future services? Imagine if in future R&B wants to expand to commercial real estate or luxury real estate. Would they then need 4 domains? That's a rabbit hole you don't want to go down.

3. Are you ready to invest? Provided that the current domain isn't making it somehow impossible to believe one could buy farm real estate from the company, I would present the company with a plan for creating the best possible section on the website for farm real estate. I would consistently publish best-in-class articles on this topic until I'd convinced Google that farm real estate is part-and-parcel of my brand, just as much as residential real estate is. I would be sure this content was highlighted from the homepage onward, and was built with good UX and good CTAs in mind. I'd invest a great deal in this, and make my pages rank highly for core terms. I'd also consider offsite marketing initiatives (both online and off) that would begin to build awareness of my brand's association with farm properties. I see far more opportunities than limits with this approach, and with the right plan, you should have no problem creating a sterling strategy for the client.

Hope these thoughts are helpful!

[HalfPriceBanners]

Tough question! I'll try to touch on a couple of your pros / cons.

1- A domain name rich in keywords isn't nearly as important as it used to be. If you were reading old articles (from before 2013, which those may have referenced), this might have misled you a bit.
2- Similar to less domain authority (as each will need to grow their own backlinks), each site will also have less direct traffic- which is a strong ranking factor that shouldn't be overlooked. It's VERY difficult for low-traffic sites to gain traction on competitive organic keywords.

My instinct is to make a branch of the original site devoted to the other audience. Nothing precludes that portion of the site from having its own blog and being a go-to resource for that audience. When you begin ranking on the organic keywords, they should end up in that portion of the site anyway.

If you were pricing/rebranding the same products differently for another audience that may change things, but I don't think that your list of "Pros" as is outweigh the "Cons." Of course, do more research and hopefully others will chime in too.  Best of luck!