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Hey Brian,

This is something I've been mulling over for the better part of two years. I am assuming you've made a decision on this already, and I was curious to see what you ended up doing?

We currently have 10 franchises, and continue to grow. We will have four offices in the Seattle MSP (currently all in different suburbs). I have always been concerned about how it would work with two offices in the city, but I felt being able to use an exact NAP for each office individually was important. After reading Dana's response, I'm now inclined to use the non-localized names for all offices.

Which way did you go, and how is that working out for you? Any other advice or lessons learned along the way?

Cheers,
Logan

This is almost too vague of a question, because CTR is really dependent on a ton of variables, such as:

• Perceived value of said "bonus"

• Industry served

• How specific, or broad your targeting is

• Do you cap your impressions?

• Branding and brand recognition (does it look familiar to the viewer - do they recall your message your brand, what your product is all about?)

• The design/interactivity of the ad

Remarketing campaigns can vary significantly on those factors (and probably others), but if you can achieve 1% that would be pretty impressive IMO. Realistically, most the remarketing campaigns I've run (healthcare industry) end up .01-.75% CTR.

I agree with Keri - there is definitely too much info on the page. This might cause a higher bounce rate, which could hurt your rankings. The site/content could probably be re-organized in a more appealing way. A/B testing would be definitely recommended.

I am not 100% sure, but I am think that having a huge list of service areas at the bottom your main page looks somewhat spammy to search engines. Instead, build backlinks from sites relevant to those locations, or create a locations page specifically for that on the main navigation.

Lastly, your site has some pixelated graphics, a somewhat template-like layout. When you're talking about something as controversial as hypnotherapy, creating a very polished and trustworthy brand image could do wonders. This collaborates with what Keri said about conversions.

There are plenty of things that you can do to help build ranks, but you can't leave the site or your brand stagnant. It may have worked for awhile, but you have to stay proactive to get results! Good luck!

I would create a page called "Service Area" and put an unordered list (ul) may look nicer, and is less spammy. Without knowing the product or service, I'm not sure if that will work for you.

Ex:

South Carolina

• Abbeville
• Aiken
• Allendale
• Anderson
• etc.

Georgia

• Atlanta
• Blah
• Clah
• Dlah

Most importantly - DO NOT post that list in the footer or sidebar of every page. It will significantly dilute the effectiveness. Containing this information on a single page, and peppering the rest of the site with some of your larger markets will be likely most effective for you.

Duplicate content was my original concern in posting this question.

Considering I haven't posted the news release yet, and 20+ others have, I am not going to post this release on my site. It is a time sensitive news release anyway, so no real need to tell my visitors now (with one day left in the event). I appreciate your input and I'll be sure to post news well ahead of distribution to news and media outlets.

Thanks again!

MyBlogGuest & HARO (Help a reporter out)

There's two for starters.

I would highly recommend not buying links from anyone other than a website proprietor. Search engines are getting much better at determining which links are purchased, and in  some case penalize both the advertiser and the site selling the paid links.

The best way to purchase links is to pick up the phone and make them an offer. Be very polite, compliment their website, and then ask if they would be willing to place a link on their site.

I personally think buying links this way is very inefficient unless you can get a link back from a related industry giant with enormous amounts of traffic and visibility. Otherwise your time and money is best spent building really good content, guest blogging, and growing your social network.

Hey Mozers -

We recently distributed a media release and it has been picked up by 20+ news outlets and counting.

My question: Should I publish this media release on my news/blog page? Or is it better to just bask in the incoming links? What are the benefits and drawback to each?

Thanks in advance!

When I relaunched our website I noticed our bounce rate had dropped dramatically. After inspection, it was exactly what Irving said - multiple calls to your GA script. This fires the script several times, confusing the heck out of it, and really screwing up your data.

Remove the multiple GA scripts and you'll be fine!

Thanks for all the responses guys. I was definitely on the fence before this last post.

I still have this gut feeling that people like sub-domains. It makes them feel comfortable that they're dealing with a larger brand, and makes us look professional and trustworthy. My background is primarily in branding, so it's really difficult for me to let go of the implied trust and clout that subdomains provide.

One of our biggest goals with the new website is to reduce the bounce rate, and improve our conversion of visitors to patients. That said, if we won't see much gain in rankings (and therefore traffic) from changing to subdomains, we are loosing more potential visitors, and would require a much higher conversion ratio to justify subdomains. I think you have all convinced me to move back to a sub-folder structure.

Thanks again,
Logan

Jeremy,

Right now we have several different websites, with different designs, and I would like to combine them into one, well-organized, cohesive, corporate website.

Part of our strategy is to make our organization look large, well-established, and trusted. IMO a single corporate website with sub-directory websites for individual offices is like the business suit of website architecture. Currently, with more than seven separate sites, different domains, and different branding on each, I'm afraid it doesn't carry the professional message we're looking for.

My idea was:

Take:

• omahaemergencydental.com
• desmoinesemergencydental.com
• seattleemergencydental.com
• etc...

And make it:

• omaha.emergencydental.com
• desmoines.emergencydental.com
• seattle.emergencydental.com
• etc..

We currently have more than a dozen offices, and there is a good chance we will be adding more offices soon. I really don't like these long domain names, and I find they are very hard to read. I really like the consistent nomenclature and logical format of subdomains.

Another consideration is if we open an office in NYC, and that domain has already been taken it ruins our consistent nomenclature. Subdomains relieve that issue, but at what cost?

Thanks again for your input!

I am in the process redesigning my organization's website using wordpress multisite. I am currently planning on creating subdomains for each of the locations, as I thought that having a keyword saturated domain name would provide the best rankings.

So the Omaha office would look like this: omaha.example.com

Would it be better to go with example.com/omaha?

Things to consider:

• Google adwords is currently a huge source of our traffic. Despite having very good organic rankings, we receive most of our traffic from pay-per-click sources. The "display URL" has dramatic effect on our CTR, so I want to avoid subfolders if possible. (example OmahaEmergencyDental.com receives far more click thru's than EmergencyDental.com)
• Each location currently has it's own domain and website (omahaemergencydental.com) these sites/pages have been in place for several years

Thanks in advance!