Best way to help a city-centric service provider market in new nearby territories?
-
Our client recently acquired new county territories outside the main area city. We could create separate location pages under the primary domain, but are wondering if micro sites with unique content (and location-including url) that links back to the location pages would also be a good idea.
There is some traction for certain location-based keywords in those areas.
Better to focus on the one domain, or augment with separate websites in different parts of the state? I can come up with plausible reasons for and against either, but would love your thoughts.
Thank you for any insight!
-
Hi Perfect Pitch Concepts,
Bede has pretty much said it all in his awesome response!
I'll only add, as you build out those new pages on your website, make maximum effort to make them totally unique and helpful to the user. Don't take the shortcut of publishing duplicate or thin pages. Find great things to write about regarding your client's involvement in his new service areas.
-
Thank you, Bede. We share your concerns and appreciate your articulating them so thoughtfully.
-
I would go with one site that has location pages for the following reasons:
- You'll probably be starting with fresh domains for your micro sites. If you use the existing site, you'll have some DA built up, which will assist your subpages. You're basically going to be counting on the fact that the location including URL is going to be a big part of getting ranked, and I'm not sure how that would play out long-term, especially given the recent(ish) EMD changes.
- I'd imagine the micro sites won't be providing any value for your customer that you couldn't provide with the main site. Why make them change sites to learn about the company? When I'm searching for products or services and see this, I get just a little bit more suspicious about the company, which makes the sale harder.
- Even with your unique content, your microsites are probably going to be fairly light on content (e.g. just a few pages) if they're all linking back to the same place, it might seem like you're gaming the system for backlinks.
- You probably don't have an easy way of handling your NAP data on all of these different sites. Duplicate local listings suck if they get generated accidentally.
- And, probably the biggest one for me - if you stick with one site, and get your internal structure right, link building efforts for any of the location pages (or the main page) are going to benefit the other subpages as well, so you get more bang for your buck. That's more sustainable in the long run.
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
-
Which is the best option for these pages?
Hi Guys, We have product pages on our site which have duplicate content, the search volume for people searching for these products is very, very small. Also if we add unique content, we could face keyword cannibalisation issues with category/sub-category pages. Now based on proper SEO best practice we should add rel canonical tags from these product pages to the next relevant page. Pros Can rank for product oriented keywords but search volume is very small. Any link equity to these pages passed due to the rel canonical tag would be very small, as these pages barely get any links. Cons Time and effort involved in adding rel canonical tags. Even if we do add rel canonical tags, if Google doesn't deem them relevant then they might ignore causing duplicate content issues. Time and effort involved in making all the content unique - not really worth it - again very minimal searchers. Plus if we do make it unique, then we face keyword cannibalisation issues. -- What do you think would be the optimal solution to this? I'm thinking just implementing a: Across all these product based pages. Keen to hear thoughts? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seowork2140 -
Redirecting a Few URLs to a New Domain
We are in the process of buying the blog section of a site. Let's say Site A is buying Site B. We have taken the content from Site B and replicated it on Site A, along with the exact url besides the TLD. We then issued 301 redirects from Site B to Site A and initiated a crawl on those original Site B urls so Google would understand they are now redirecting to Site A. The new urls for Site A, with the same content are now showing up in Google's index if we do a site:SiteA.com search on the big G. Anyone have any experience with this as to how long before Site A urls should replace Site B urls in the search results? I undestand there may be a ranking difference and CTR difference based on domain bias, etc... I'm just asking if everything goes as planned and there isn't a huge issue, does the process take weeks or months?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoaustin0 -
Redirecting main www. subdomain to new domain. Can you then create a new subdomain on the old domain?
Hi there, The scenario is this: We have been working on a rebrand and have changed the company name So, we want to redirect www.old-name.com to www.new-name.com However, the parent company is retaining the old brand name for corporate purposes So, in an ideal world, we'd be able to keep www.old-name.com active - but clearly that would sacrifice all of the authority built up over the years, so we do have to redirect the main www. subdomain in it's entirity. However - one suggested solution is to redirect www.old-domain.com to www.new-domain.com... but then create a new corporate subdomain: for example, business.old-domain.com business.old-domain.com will not be competing with the new site on any service/product related terms; it will only need to appear in SERPs for the company name I'd appreciate some thoughts on this, as I've not done this before or found any examples of anyone that has. Is that a massive risk in terms of sending a confusing message to Google? Thanks for your help
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | edlondon0 -
Content question please help
Would content behind a drop down on this site Https://www.homeleisuredirect.com/pool_tables/english_pool_tables/ you have to click the - more about English pool tables text under the video Work just as well for SEO as content on the page like this site http://www.pooltablesonline.co.uk/uk-slate-bed-pool-tables.asp
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
New Web Page Not Indexed
Quick question with probably a straightforward answer... We created a new page on our site 4 days ago, it was in fact a mini-site page though I don't think that makes a difference... To date, the page is not indexed and when I use 'Fetch as Google' in WT I get a 'Not Found' fetch status... I have also used the'Submit URL' in WT which seemed to work ok... We have even resorted to 'pinging' using Pinglar and Ping-O-Matic though we have done this cautiously! I know social media is probably the answer but we have been trying to hold back on that tactic as the page relates to a product that hasn't quite launched yet and we do not want to cause any issues with the vendor! That said, I think we might have to look at sharing the page socially unless anyone has any other ideas? Many thanks Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomKing0 -
Best way to get pages indexed fast?
Any suggestion on best ways to get new sites pages indexed? Was thinking getting high pr inbound links on fiverr but always a little risky right? Thanks for your opinions.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mweidner27820 -
What's the best way to manage content that is shared on two sites and keep both sites in search results?
I manage two sites that share some content. Currently we do not use a cross-domain canonical URL and allow both sites to be fully indexed. For business reasons, we want both sites to appear in results and need both to accumulate PR and other SEO/Social metrics. How can I manage the threat of duplicate content and still make sure business needs are met?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BostonWright0 -
Best way to host multiple sites for maximum seo
We have over 100 websites we built for clients that we currently host on 1 shared godaddy hosting account. They each have a link to us but since they are all under one shared account, we feel that we are not maximizing the inbound link potential. I've looked into c class hosting but found that either the ip's were flagged as spam, or they shared nameservers which defeats the purpose. I've also been told that since the c class ip's a hosting company gives to you are all owned by them, that also defeats the purpose. Anyone have any solutions besides opening 130 accounts with different hosting companies? Also, will it make any difference changing existing sites onto different hosts now or are they already tainted?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seopet0