Need sitemap opinion on large franchise network with thousands of subdomains
-
Working on a large franchise network with thousands of subdomains. There is the primary corporate domain which basically directs traffic to store locators and then to individual locations. The stores sell essentially the same products with some variations on pricing so lots of pages with the same product descriptions.
Different content
- All the subdomains have their location information address info in the header, footer and geo meta tags on every page.
- Page titles customized with franchise store id numbers.
Duplicate content
- Product description blocks.
Franchisee domains will likely have the ability to add their own content in the future but as of right now most of the content short of the blocks on the pages are duplicated.
Likely limitations -- Adding City to page titles will likely be problematic as there could be multiple franchises in the same city.
Ideally it would be nice if users could search for the store or product and have centers return that are closest to them.
We can turn on sitemaps on all the subdomains and try to submit them to the search engines. Looking for insight regarding submitting all these sites or just focusing on the main domain that has a lot less content on it.
-
Ideally yes, you would have a separate XML Sitemap file and Google Search Console profile, as well as a separate (and combined) Google Analytics view for each of the thousands of subdomains.
If that is not possible, at the very least you should have a sitemap that includes every indexable page on the primary site, as well as an XML sitemap on each subdomain, which is linked to in that subdomain's own Robots.txt file.
According to the XML sitemaps protocol, XML sitemap files can not contain URLs from different domains. This includes subdomains. You have to keep all URLs to a single domain per XML sitemap. See sitemaps explained for more info.
As for the Title Tag thing, I don't see why you couldn't have a street name AND city -- or neighborhood and city -- so that they would all be unique, while still including the city.
-
Would I have to validate all xx thousands of subdomains in webmaster tools first?
-
Sounds a very tricky one!
You could look to use an index-sitemap.xml so you can list all of your separate subdomain-sitemaps. that way you'll only need to submit one single sitemap.
I would recommend looking at Screaming Frog to help you do this.
Good luck!
-
There is a main site with the store locator that points to an individual franchise location, however nothing can be purchased from that site.
The franchise is very local oriented, that is why every site has a subdomain. Every Franchise can set their own pricing and product options.
-
Hey There!
This does sound like a complex scenario - even a bit of a messy one. Ideally, what the brand would have done here was to build a single website with a single store locator taking users to an appropriate landing page based on the city or zip they type in. The single website would feature a single product menu, accessible to all users regardless of city, removing any risk of creating duplicate product description pages. Something along the lines of how REI.com handles their web presence (you might like to show that to the client).
Instead of taking this approach, am I right in understanding that your client got into this thousands-of-subdomains predicaments in order to provide single-user access to a specific franchisee in a specific city, while not allowing him access to the entire website? Or, for some other reason?
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
-
Proper SEO structure for Franchise/ Franchisee websites
Hi Neighbors, Franchise website design and development can be difficult, there’s no doubt about it. I had to find the right balance between a unique and unified brand identity, and a localized experience that accurately reflects the individual franchisees and their efforts. Due to the many benefits, I have structured the to read _domain.com/location _ domain.com = TLD /location = subfolder (location page) I have also built a customized CMS (e.g. Drupal) and have given each location access to manage their location page (subfolder). To accommodate local SEO optimization, franchisees have complete control in terms of optimizing their location page (subfolder). Title tags, meta description, Alt tags, etc... Will any local optimization performed in the subfolder (location page) be stiffened because it was not done in the TLD but in the subfolder ?
Local Website Optimization | | Jeffvertus1 -
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:
Local Website Optimization | | Scott-Jones
napervillecommercialcleaners.com
officecleaningchicago.com
evanstonofficecleaning.com I 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.1 -
Checking subdomains/ site structure of a website for International SEO
Dear Moz community, I am looking into two websites for a friend and we want to understand the following: What is the site structure as per the sub domains? e.g currently it is .com/en/ or .com/ru/ or .com/zh/ Using the crawl report, each page has a en or other language version. I take it this means that we have to create copy, meta titles and descriptions for each of the languages even if the page is the same but in a different language? To avoid duplication of content would you suggest canonical tags to be put in place? To check hreflang mark up, I couldn't find anything in the code which makes me thing a script is automatically translating this? This is the first time I have started to look at international SEO and want to understand what to look for in an audit of exisiting sites. Thank you,
Local Website Optimization | | TAT1000 -
How to correctly move subdomain to subfolder (google webmaster)?
Hello, This is my first post in here 🙂 I just wondered what is the correct way to move a subdomain to subfolder? I've moved it, re-done sitemap, so that main website would include a subfolder, as they are part of one big website now (it was something like a blog on a subdomain). Subdomain now does correct 301 redirects. Submitted new sitemap to google, asked google to re-fetch the whole domain (thus subfolder should be re-fetched too, as it's part of main nav). The areas i'm in doubt: I can tell google that the domain got moved, however it is moved to the one that is already approved in the same account, but is in a subfolder, so should i do this? Or should i simply somehow erase it on webmaster? The blog was launched about a month ago, and it isn't perfectly optimized yet, it wasn't on google SERPs pretty much at all, excluding googling it straightly, and there are pretty much 0 traffic from google, almost all of it is either direct either referral, mostly social, Thanks, Pavel
Local Website Optimization | | PavelGro920 -
Subdomain versus Subfolder for Local SEO
Hello Moz World, I'm wanting to know the best practices for utilizing a subdomain versus a subfolder for multi location businesses, i.e. miami.example.com vs. example.com/miami; I would think that that utilizing the subdomain would make more sense for a national organization with many differing locations, while a subfolder would make more sense for a smaller more nearby locations. I wanted to know if anyone has any a/b examples or when it should go one way or another? Thank you, Kristin Miller
Local Website Optimization | | Red_Spot_Interactive0 -
Need to access robots.txt to block tags
Hi My website nykb.com is showing up in moz as having multiple duplicate pages because of the tags (each tag generates its own page and since posts have many tags but the same tags are only used once/twice the tag pages are all duplicate pages. I wanted to block the tagpages in robots.txt but cant seem to find access to it- have searched online but havent come up with anything! I do not have access to the ftp folders only the wordpress backend.. should I just remove tags? the posts are grouped by category too.. THANKS
Local Website Optimization | | henya0 -
Site was hacked - do I need to change my phone number?
The site I was leasing was hacked about a year ago. I've bought a new domain and changed everything about the site. It is completely separated from the old domain. However, my current phone number is still visible on the old site and I can't get it down. I really don't want to get a new phone number, but the SEO success of my new site is extremely important. Is there anyway the fact that my old phone number on the hacked site could hurt my new site's standing in Google? Thank you so much!
Local Website Optimization | | OptimizationMegan0 -
Bing ranking a weak local branch office site of our 200-unit franchise higher than the brand page - throughout the USA!?
We have a brand with a major website at ourbrand.com. I'm using stand-ins for the actual brandname. The brand is a unique term, has 200 local offices with sites at ourbrand.com/locations/locationname, and is structured with best practices, and has a well built sitemap.xml. The link profile is diverse and solid. There are very few crawl errors and no warnings in Google Webmaster central. Each location has schema.org markup that has been checked with markup validation tools. No matter what tool you use, and how you look at it t's obvious this is the brand site. DA 51/100, PA 59/100. A rouge franchisee has broken their agreement and made their own site in a city on a different domain name, ourbrandseattle.com. The site is clearly optimized for that city, and has a weak inbound link profile. DA 18/100, PA 21/100. The link profile has low diversity and generally weak. They have no social media activity. They have not linked to ourbrand.com <- my leading theory. **The problem is that this rogue site is OUT RANKING the brand site all over the USA on Bing. **Even where it makes no sense at all. We are using whitespark.ca to check our ranking remotely in other cities and try to remove the effects of local personalization. What should we do? What have I missed?
Local Website Optimization | | scottclark0