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I think an important thing you forgot to mention was how long you have been carrying out your SEO strategy for this client. This is essential to know - high ranking websites do not happen quickly.

Having a keyword in the domain used to be extremely beneficial, but Google has began not factoring it in nearly as much.

We are in the process of building a new website for a client with locations in Tucson and Phoenix. Currently, they have one website that encompasses all locations, however, we are going to build them location specific websites (as many of the services are different between locations).

Now my question is, as far as SEO goes, which one of these options would be the best?

Option 1: Have separate domain names for each location. For example, StevesPetTucson.com and StevesPetPhoenix.com.

_Pros: Easy to target specific, local keywords. Better looking domains. _

_Cons: Splits backlinks between two domains. _

Option 2: Setup StevesPet.com/Phoenix and StevesPet.com/Tucson.

Pros: Keeps all backlinks pointing to one root domain.

Note: We are going to use seperate WordPress installs for both websites, regardless of how we setup the domains. As we will be using different templates, menus and so on, we found this to be the best option.

Thanks for any advice!