Need SEO Opinions
-
SEO Campaign and Best Practices
Hello, I have dabbled with MOZ before and I’m coming back with a project that is going to be a marathon. I have a very general question for some of you SEO professionals. I would like to lay out a scenario and I would appreciate any feedback that you can offer.
Let’s say I have a client which is an office cleaning company that just services the local Chicago area, let’s call them ABC123 Commercial Cleaners. They have a website that is Example: abc123commercialcleaners.com. On the website it explains all about their services with several different pages. If we want to start a site on another URL, let’s say officecleaningchicago.com will this hurt our online reputation? Or will it make us stronger?
Our plan on paper is to target the different localities around Chicago
Example:
napervillecommercialcleaners.com
officecleaningchicago.com
evanstonofficecleaning.comI just wanted to get opinions on whether this is a good or bad idea. If it will strengthen or weaken our brand.
I hope I have explained a very general scenario (which is completely fictitious) I would appreciate any feedback that you can offer.
-
Thank you to everyone for their input. I appreciate your feedback. I'm going to research more about link building and where to start that process. I will advise against the multi-site approach and focus efforts elsewhere.
-
Hey Scott,
I'm voting with the other community members on this - it's just not typically a good idea to do this.
Rather than trying a multi-site approach for a single business, invest the resources in building the authority of the existing company assets. The payoff will likely be greater and the management certainly less cumbersome.
-
Hey Scott.
I'd avoid it for two reasons:
1 - you'd have to be careful to avoid ranking for the same term so it's not viewed as spam, and
2 - you'd have to split your resources.It can take a lot of work to rank, even for local phrases. A lot of that work is external - citations, links, etc. All of that will have to be duplicated. Time that would be better used building out the office section of the site and focusing just on links and citations around business services to that section and starting off ahead due to the weight carried by the primary domain.
Obviously the answer may differ based on the real scenario - there are cases for multiple sites but that's in very specific cases like Search Engine Land having a different site for their conference - basically where there are two completely different offering and user intents.
-
Doing this is generally a bad idea and can be seen from the Google algorithm as an attempt to spam the search engine. You will create new websites that are generally the same as the one you have. They will not provide any additional information and will be owned by the same company offering the same services. This, in my opinion, is the shortest way to a Google penalty. And even if Google doesn't recognize them a competitor of yours can report them as spam as this is a violation of Google's rules.
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 -
Question About Local SEO
Hey all, If a business operates in one city but works with associated organizations across multiple regions how would this impact a local SEO campaign? For example, a transportation company is located in Texas but services the Northwest and New England by outsourcing to smaller transportation companies in each of those regions. Would it be wise to create pages for each region they service on their website and then break that down in further into specific cities? Also, would it be worth targeting local search terms even though specific cities are serviced by the associated organizations and not the parent company itself? Thanks in advance, Andrew
Local Website Optimization | | mostcg0 -
Duplicate Content - Local SEO - 250 Locations
Hey everyone, I'm currently working with a client that has 250 locations across the United States. Each location has its own website and each website has the same 10 service pages. All with identical content (the same 500-750 words) with the exception of unique meta-data and NAP which has each respective location's name, city, state, etc. I'm unsure how duplicate content works at the local level. I understand that there is no penalty for duplicate content, rather, any negative side-effects are because search engines don't know which page to serve, if there are duplicates. So here's my question: If someone searches for my client's services in Miami, and my client only as one location in that city, does duplicate content matter? Because that location isn't competing against any of my client's other locations locally, so search engines shouldn't be confused by which page to serve, correct? Of course, in other cities, like Phoenix, where they have 5 locations, then I'm sure the duplicate content is negatively affecting all 5 locations. I really appreciate any insight! Thank you,
Local Website Optimization | | SEOJedi510 -
Does multiple sites that relate to one company hurt seo
I know this has been asked and answered but my situation is a little different. I am a local electrical contractor. I specialize in a service and not a product. Competition is high in the local market due to the other electrical contractors that have well seasoned sites with very good DA/PA. Although new to the web I am not new to the trade. Throughout years almost back to the AOL dialup days I have been collecting domain names for this particular purpose. Now I want to put them to good use. Being an electrical contractor, there are many different facets of work and services we provide. My primary site is empireelec.com A second site I threw online overnight with minimal content is jacksonvillelightingrepair.com. Although it is a fresh site, there is minimal content and I have put almost zero effort in to it. It appears to be ranking for keywords a lot quicker. That leads me to believe I should utilize my other domain jacksonvillefloridaelectrician.com and target just the keyword Jacksonville Florida Electrician. It leads me to believe I should use jacksonvillebeachelectrician.com for targeting electricians in jacksonville beach. And again with jacksonvilleelectricianservice.com I can provide a unique phone number for each site. Am I going about this all wrong? Everything I read says no,no,no but I feel my situation is a little more unique.
Local Website Optimization | | empireelec1 -
Local SEO: City & County Pages
I'm working on developing some local pages for an HVAC company. They cover two counties, so I was planning on having two county pages, then linking them to individual city pages to keep the menu simpler and not cluttering it up with a couple dozen city pages for people to slog through. Has anybody ever done county pages before for local SEO? Or at least seen them? Just curious to see if there's any real benefit overall for have separate county pages, or if I should just stick to city pages.
Local Website Optimization | | ChaseMG0 -
Will subdomains with duplicate content hurt my SEO? (solutions to ranking in different areas)
My client has offices in various areas of the US, and we are working to have each location/area rank well in their specific geographical location. For example, the client has offices in Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas & St Louis. Would it be best to: Set up the site structure to have an individual page devoted to each location/area so there's unique content relevant to that particular office? This keeps everything under the same, universal domain & would allow us to tailor the content & all SEO components towards Chicago (or other location). ( example.com/chicago-office/ ; example.com/atlanta-office/ ; example.com/dallas-office/ ; etc. ) Set up subdomains for each location/area...using the basically the same content (due to same service, just different location)? But not sure if search engines consider this duplicate content from the same user...thus penalizing us. Furthermore, even if the subdomains are considered different users...what do search engines think of the duplicate content? ( chicago.example.com ; atlanta.example.com ; dallas.example.com ; etc. ) 3) Set up subdomains for each location/area...and draft unique content on each subdomain so search engines don't penalize the subdomains' pages for duplicate content? Does separating the site into subdomains dilute the overall site's quality score? Can anyone provide any thoughts on this subject? Are there any other solutions anyone would suggest?
Local Website Optimization | | SearchParty0 -
SEO: .com vs .org vs .travel Domain
Hi there, I am new to MOZ Q&A and first of all I appreciate all the folks here that share their expertise and make everyone understand 'the WWW' a bit better. My question: I have been developing a 'travel guide' site for a city in the U.S. and now its time to choose the right domain name. I put a strong focus on SEO in terms of coding, site performance as well as content and to round things up I'd like to register the _best _domain name in terms of SEO. Let's suppose the city is Atlanta. I have found the following domain names that are available and I was wondering whether you guys could give me some inside on which domain name would perform best. discoveratlanta.org
Local Website Optimization | | kinimod
atlantaguide.org
atlanta.travel
atlantamag.com Looking at the Google Adwords Keyword tool the term that reaches the highest search queries is obviously "Atlanta" itself. Sites that are already ranking high are atlanta.com and atlanta.gov. So basically I am wondering whether I should aim for a new TLD like atlanta.travel or rather go with a .org domain. I had a look around and it seems that .org domains generally work well for city guides (at least a lot of such sites use .org domains). However, I have also seen a major US city that uses .travel and ranks first. On the other hand in New York, nycgo.com ranks well. Is it safe to assume that from the domain names I mentioned it really doesn't matter which one I use since it wouldn't significantly affect my ranking (good or bad)? Or would you still choose one above the other? What do you generally thing about .travel domain names (especially since they are far more expensive then the rest)? I really appreciate your response to my question! Best,
kinimod0