How to approach SEO for a business with three distinct focus areas
-
I have a client who has asked for the development and optimisation of three websites for a business located at one address. They offer specialised skin care, have a make-up artistry division and also a luxury portraiture/photographic service offered to clients. I have suggested one website, based on all I have read in this community (Possum etc.).
Their concern is that they will seem like a "master of none" and envision three sites interlinked. Before I push back and categorically say that this is a poor idea, I wanted to gain some insight from those of you who may have dealt with this scenario before. I need to explain how one domain can be structured to present all three these areas as distinct, given that the home page will speak to all three. Any ideas regarding site structure and optimisation strategy would be much appreciated.
Thanks in advance!
-
Three websites = 3x the work...and budget needed. Similar to a medical clinic when it comes to services. List this company's services and optimize accordingly. If it is an incredibly competitive market, niche website may be the way to go.
If I had it my way, in a medium to low competition market, i would focus on strengthen the content & DA on one site, rather than 3.
-
Hi Werner,
This is a really interesting scenario, not typical of this type of question, in that you are genuinely talking about 3 different businesses here. Most often, we see questions in the forum from something like an HVAC contractor who wants to do one website for heating and another for cooling. The answer to that is an unequivocal "no", because the business is really a single entity trying to fake the appearance of being multiple businesses for the sake of SEO.
In your client's case, she has 3 unique businesses that would be represented by 3 unique Google My Business categories. Because of the different categories, we'd think less about Possum problems in this scenario, despite the shared address, because someone looking for a make-up artist is not going to be doing the same search as they would if they were seeking a portrait photographer. If she had 3 different offices, each offering just one of the services, it would make sense to consider 3 different websites accompanies by 3 sets of citations/reviews/social outreach, etc.
But, the fact that this is one owner, at a single location would make me steer her away from the multi-site approach. Managing the marketing for 3 businesses is likely to lead to burnout of either finances or creative resources, and there is the off-chance that Google could mistake the model as spam, deciding that the 3 businesses are actually just one, given the share address. I'm actually not too scared that they would do this, but it is a risk, even if she were to establish the 3 separate phone lines staffed by people who always answer the phone for only the correct business.
I think the dilemma/opportunity facing your client is one of business identity. She needs to identify what connects her three services instead of dividing them up by how they differ. If she can hit upon a single business identity that covers this wide range of services, she'll have a single business to market, at a single address, with a single phone to staff, a single reputation to manage. Your client sounds creative. I'd advise brainstorming with her so that you wind up with something like a business called "Best Face" that covers having your makeup done, your portrait taken, and your skin treated all under one roof, rather than being Anna's Makeup, Anna's Skin Care and Anna's Portraits on 3 different sites. Build a single brand that revolves around celebration of the human face, or something along those lines, and put EGOL's good advice into full action, cross selling the services and creating an indelible reputation for the owner.
-
Yes, guiding structure. Showing clear ties from one service of the business to another.
-
You are spot on with that description! She is a very gifted and versatile person who needs to continue to apply what has been natural...with a little bit of guiding structure.
-
Your client sounds like a Renaissance Man. A person who has mastered many things. A Leonoardo da Vinci. If this person also has panache, presenting a business of many artistic services seems natural.
-
Thank you very much EGOL. This confirms my intended strategy, and gives some substance to the conversation I need to have. I'll need to figure out how to best structure this website so that potential clients see each offering as valuable in their own right, but also see the relevance to other services, as you have pointed out. This would also need to be coupled with some landing pages, me thinks. Thanks again.
-
I would work on convincing the client about....
-- the value of cross-selling, many current clients probably use more than one service, they bought one and then bought more
-- the importance of uniting all of your assets to perform well in search
-- the relevance of these services to one another and how that might help them rank better in google and appeal to multiple customers
-- in these businesses it is hard to find someone you can trust and satisfies you... once you find that person or business it is much easier to allow them to do additional services for you... this is building loyalty of the customer and building their respect for your business
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
-
Regional multilingual seo
Hello, I have a problem related to 3 website that we are publishing in Belgium. 90% of the content will be exactly the same. The domain names are going to be xxxx-flanders.be (content in NL) xxxx-wallonia.be (content in FR and DE) xxxx-brussels.be (content in FR and NL) My problem is that I will have duplicate content in French between xxxx-wallonia.be and xxxx-brussels.be and duplicate content in Dutch between xxxx-flanders.be and xxxx-brussels.be The granularity of hreflang language annotation and geotargeting in the Google Search Console is at the country level. How can I do that at the regional level?
Local Website Optimization | | Lvet0 -
SEO Company wants to rebuild site
Hello Community, I am a designer and web developer and I mostly work with squarespace. Squarespace has SEO best practices built into the platform, as well as developer modes for inserting custom code when necessary. I recently built a beautiful website for a Hail Repair Company and referred them to several companies to help them with SEO and paid search. Several of these companies have told this client that in order to do any kind of SEO, they'll need to completely rebuild the site. I've seen some of the sites these companies have built, and they are tacky, over crowded and hard to use. My client is now thinking they need to have their site rebuilt. Is there any merit to this idea? Or are these companies just using the knowledge gap to swindle people into buying more services? The current site is : https://www.denverautohailspecialists.com/ Any advice would be appreciated.
Local Website Optimization | | arzawacki2 -
Service area local seo
Hello, everyone. I am struggling a little with the vast amounts of information about how best to get a local service area business ranking and the best practice. If I explain what I have been doing and then see how I can improve. I have created a couple of websites for window cleaners. These window cleaners offer several services like window cleaning, gutter cleaning, conservatory cleaning, pressure washing etc. They also cover several towns/cities so it's important for them to be able to target all these areas in search. They don't have multiple offices so only have one home/office address and by the nature of the job provide services at the customer's house/business. What I have been doing is creating a page for each service they provide then to cover the areas I have been doing two things. Creating a page on the site called areas covered with a list of the areas they cover and also adding in the title of the page the main one or two areas that are most important to them. From what I can gather this might not be the best approach?? Google may see the areas in titles as keyword stuffing? Google also doesn't like a list of areas in one go anywhere on a site which can also seem like keyword stuffing? So for an example, this would be a rough title structure of service pages Window cleaners in town/city, town/city and town/city Gutter Cleaners in town/city, town/city and town/city As I said I am not sure this is the best way to do this from what I read. I have read about area specific pages but i struggle to see how i could make each area specific page unique enough as the service is exactly the same in each area. I have also read that putting the most important keywords at the begingin of the the title is better so using the above example would this be better? town/city window cleaners - business name So from what i understand having pages like this might be better Window cleaners town/city1 Window cleaners town/city2 Window cleaners town/city3 Gutter Cleaners town/city1 Gutter Cleaners town/city2 Gutter Cleaners town/city3 and so on but like I say I am aware each of these area specific pages would need to be unique but being that the services are exactly the same in each area I am not sure how I could warrant creating all the pages. Writing about the specific area on the page seems a little odd in that the visitor who lands on that page doesn't want to learn about their area, they live there and know the area. They want to know what the service is and if they do in fact cover their area. In which case how can i best ensure all or most of the areas they cover are targeted and show in search? Some sites i have done cover around 20-30 towns around them so how can best ensure they rank for them? I have also been reading conflicting information about how to structure pages and urls. Some say don't use commas in page titles, some say don't use underscores and only use hyphens. Similarly, I have read that the URL should not contain any hyphens but I am not sure about this seeing as WordPress often adds hyphens between words in URLs. Some say you should always have an H1 on every page others say it's not all that important anymore. With images, i have also been giving them alts the same as the page titles thay are on, is this the wrong thing to do? Id be happy to private messge (if i can do that here) one of the sites I would be eternally grateful if anyone can help in firstly clarifying how I could best improve ranking for areas covered and secondly what best practice is to structure page content like H1's image alts etc. Thanks
Local Website Optimization | | Gavpeds0 -
If we are a local based business, what is the best approach to tracking keywords? Shall we be micro tracking?
we are a local based business and we only have one physical property but we service a 15 mile radius (people within a 15 mile radius will use our services) when it comes to keyword tracking and monitoring should we just be looking at the 3 main local towns or should we go out to the villages around our area too? at what level shall we be micro tracking? do we go to such a micro level for tracking keywords for all the villages which creates a lot of keywords for the locations? what is the best approach?
Local Website Optimization | | Mutatio_Digital0 -
Does having a host located in a different country than the location of the website/website's audience affects SEO?
For example if the website is example.ro and the hosting would be on Amazon Web Services. Thanks for your help!
Local Website Optimization | | IrinaIoana0 -
Local food delivery SEO strategy
Hey guys, I'm working with a new company that doesn't have a brick and mortar storefront, they deliver. They basically deliver pre packaged smoothies in a VERY localized area (Vancouver, BC). I'm wondering how grandiose their goals should be re ranking for keywords that have non localized authority. What do I mean? Lets say their marketing pillars are "health education related to smoothies" "convenient veggies for smoothies" "(insert health benefit here) for smoothies". Should they be trying to compete for these keywords? Or should they really be trying to rank with keywords especially to Vancouver? Side note: What kind of effect does Country and Locality have on keywords that are generally used by content providers and not service related companies building out an inbound strategy? Thanks in advance!
Local Website Optimization | | Anti-Alex0 -
Business in one location, be found in others?
Hi all, A bit of an interesting one but I am sure you can all help. My client has a business in a town called location A. Surrounding town A there are several other towns - My client wants to make sure they also appear in SERPs for these surrounding areas, even though their business is not physically located there. E.g. Product town A
Local Website Optimization | | HB17
Product town B
Product town C
Or even just being physically searching from one of those locations and typing the product name, they want to be on that first page. For example if you live in town B which is 20 miles away, my clients still wants to appear right at the top of the SERPs as they are competing against other businesses for that area. They also want to appear for town C, D, and E, all of which are surrounding town A. How can I make this happen? Would I need to create multiple landing pages and focus the SEO on each individual location? I'm just worried Google would see duplicate content but with varied location keywords. I don't have any room left in the page title to add every location. They do legitimately serve these areas, if you are looking for their product there are a few competitors around but this is in their 'territory' so to speak. Any help big or small would be great. Thanks!0 -
Local SEO question
Hi I was wondering is there any specific rules for Local SEO for a service company which provides a service in a variety of cities but only has one physical location. For example is it ok to target the other cities in Title Tags or would this be frowned upon? Regards
Local Website Optimization | | TheZenAgency0