Local business with multiple sites
-
I'm auditing a local business' sites (a spa) and I wanted to run my recommendations by everyone.
There are 3 sites:
www.sitename1.com -- main store location, used for Google Places listing #1 www.sitename2.com -- 2nd store location, used for Google Places listing #2 www.sitename3.com -- used for product sales for both locations
Sitename1.com has the most ranking power. I'm going to recommend that they move sitename2.com and sitename3.com to sitename1.com as subfolders, 301 redirecting each page to the corresponding page on sitename1.com/subfolder.
Google Places listing #2 would be changed from www.sitename2.com to www.sitename.com/location2.
Any risks or problems with this strategy anyone can see?
-
Hi Keith,
If these businesses are in the same metropolitan area, then I definitely give thumbs up to consolidation. Yes, put 301 redirects in place.
Regarding optimizing the footer, there is not a problem with listing several addresses. As long as you have 10 or less locations, consider this a fine practice. I do recommend using hCard for the the formatting of the addresses...and do make your Contact Page a good strong page featuring both addresses in hCard. Also a good idea to make a Google MyMap for each location and embed and link to it on the contact page.
Make the copy clear that you've got the 2 locations from the homepage forward.
I feel you are making a smart choice for this business. Good luck!
-
Related question: if location #2 is brought under site 1 as a location page, what's best practice as far as putting the address in the footer sitewide? Put location 1 address in the footer everywhere but the location 2 page(s)? Avoid altogether?
Thanks --
-
Hi -- thanks for your help. Here is more info. in response to your answer:
-I have picked up duplicate content problems and will be working with the client to fix this
-The locations are in the same metro area (good to know that separate states can be a good reason to keep separate sites)
-The lost rankings/Places shake-up is a bit concerning. Site 1 is well-established and has domain authority of 38 and home page authority of 48 (this is the site I'd likely move everything to). Location 2's site is 2.5 years old but has 23 domain authority and 36 page authority. Site 3 is an online store for spa products and very new (not yet launched).
For queries that trigger a Places result, location #1 outranks location #2 in every instance I can find. Having location #2 disappear for a while wouldn't be great, but from what I see the location #1 site ranks really well Organically (and there is a prominent link to location #2 on the home page) so we may be OK.
Also, there are a few queries where local results are not triggered, and the location #2's site ranks high. I'm not worried about the Organic ranking scenario in this case because a 301 redirect should largely preserve the position, correct?
In any case, I think the benefits outweigh the costs and consolidated ranking power potential. I'll keep my fingers crossed that the Places shake-up will be short-lived and advise the client accordingly.
Thanks -- let me know if I missed anything.
-
Hi Keith!
Thanks for coming to Q&A with your question. I'm the Local SEO Associate here in the forum. I will do my best to answer your question.
It's a very common practice for companies to have a single website for their multiple locations. For example, an auto dealership with locations in San Jose, San Francisco and San Rafael does not need to have 3 websites. They can simply have one and do landing pages for each of the three cities.
The main benefit I can discern of consolidating your client's 3 sites will be greater ease of management.
One thing I can imagine that you are going to need to be careful about is this: do sites 1, 2 or 3 duplicate one another's content in any way? If so, you need to avoid this. Don't have the landing page copy for the 2 different locales be the same.
Another thing I'm curious about is the locales of the 2 physical offices. How far apart are they? If they were in different states, I'd be inclined to keep the businesses on separate sites, but if they are in the same state, I think having the one site will be fine.
My only other concern would be potential lost rankings for the other sites. Are they old and established, or relatively new and low ranking? If the former, it would be a tough decision to get rid of them. If the latter, this re-organization could be a smart idea.
Finally, do realize that when you make changes in Google Places, it can cause a temporary shakeup. Even small changes like altering the domain the Place Page is pointing to can result in a time delay until Google's updates its index. Prepare the client for that possibility.
I hope my thoughts have been helpful, Keith. Good luck!
-
Hi sorry I have read your initial question more in detail and did some further pondering and research and as I understand it, according to Google's places quality guidelines if you are moving all the store locations to best ranking domain as sub folders you should still only have one listing for the central store and add service areas.
You can go that way but then you will loose two possbile places listings. But then again on the other hand some one can report the listings as is to Google and they can remove the listing and see it as duplicate listing.
http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528
I would do what you suggested above accept only keep one listing as is to best ranking domain and then edit the listing with service areas if not already listed.
Even though they do not say this in detail in their help I am sure Google might flag your edit if you point to an existing domain places listing.
Hope this helps,
-
Hi -- there are no subdomains in the equation here. I would be moving to subfolder pages (not subdomains), and the current domains are separate domain names altogether.
Thanks --
-
After panda there has been a few people that would create sub domains saying that this worked as lets say all content that is related to yellow went to yellow.domain.com and red to red.domain.com.
Why I am bringing this up I think you should maybe look at this and be sure if moving to main domain as sub domain that Google Panda will not penalise the over all site, this can be prevented by making sure you not moving over any of the old content that was low performing, if there is some of the old content that was low performing I would improved it and the move it over to sub domain and 301 redirect as you said to the new sub domain and content that is better when it comes to post panda on site seo factors (if this makes sense).
Here is a interesting forum thread you could read that might influence your decission.
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4394776.htm
Hope this helps,
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
-
Are sliders killing our site?
Our website, http://shatterbuggy.com, has what I believe is a systemic issue that stems from the heavy reliance upon the Revolution Slider for Wordpress. I am not an SEO expert and our site has vexed many SEOs in the past. We get feedback regularly from customers (especially those that are not tech savvy) that express gratitude for the ease of use via following an image to image sequence to get to their respective booking. This was our goal when creating the site. Incidentally, in many cases, the only linking from page to page is within the slider itself (clickable image) and there is little to no content. That said, we seems to stumble in SERPS against seemingly inferior competition. For example, we should be ranked in spot 1, 2, or 3 ish for "iPhone repair Minneapolis" but rather we are stuck near spot 15. Any thoughts on whether this is a strategy that may be harming us? If so, would simply creating content on these empty (slider only) pages help? Should we create "static links" that connect to the same places as the slider? Also, is our particular use of the slider creating H1 issues? Thank you all! B.
Technical SEO | | BenjaminH0 -
Multiple H1 tags in Squarespace
Hi. I'm using Squarespace, and I've noticed they assign the page title and site title h1 tag status. So if I add an on-page h1 tag, that's three in total. I've seen what Matt Cutts said about multiple h1 tags being acceptable (although that video was back in 2009 and a lot has changed since then). But I'm still a little concerned that this is perhaps not the best way of structuring for SEO. Could anyone offer me any advice? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | The_Word_Department0 -
How to create site map for large site (ecommerce type) that has 1000's if not 100,000 of pages.
I know this is kind of a newbie question but I am having an amazing amount of trouble creating a sitemap for our site Bestride.com. We just did a complete redesign (look and feel, functionality, the works) and now I am trying to create a site map. Most of the generators I have used "break" after reaching some number of pages. I am at a loss as to how to create the sitemap. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks
Technical SEO | | BestRide0 -
Can hotlinking images from multiple sites be bad for SEO?
Hi, There's a very similar question already being discussed here, but it deals with hotlinking from a single site that is owned by the same person. I'm interested whether hotlinking images from multiple sites can be bad for SEO. The issue is that one of our bloggers has been hotlinking all the images he uses, sometimes there are 3 or 4 images per blog from different domains. We know that hotlinking is frowned upon, but can it affect us in the SERPs? Thanks, James
Technical SEO | | OptiBacUK0 -
Multiple Sites Duplicate Content Best Practice
Hi there, I have one client (atlantawidgets.com) who has a main site. But also has duplicate sites with different urls targeting specific geo areas. I.e. (widgetmakersinmarietta.com) Would it be best to go ahead and create a static home page at these add'l sites and make the rest of the site be nonindexed? Or should I go in and allow more pages to be indexed and change the content? If so how many, 3, 5, 8? I don't have tons of time at this point. 3)If I change content within the duplicate sites, what % do I need to change. Does switching the order of the sentences of the content count? Or does it need to be 100%fresh? Thanks everyone.
Technical SEO | | greenhornet770 -
How to create unique content for businesses with multiple locations?
I have a client that owns one franchise location of a franchise company with multiple locations. They have one large site with each location owning it's own page on the site, which I feel is the best route. The problem is that each location page has basically duplicate content on each page resulting in like 80 pages of duplicate content. I'm looking for advice on how to create unique content for each location page? What types of information can we write about to make each page unique, because you can only twist sentences and content around so much before it just all sounds cookie cutter and therefore offering little value.
Technical SEO | | RonMedlin0 -
404 Errors After Site Migration
Hello - I'm working on a website selling fashion accessories. The site just went through a site migration from Yahoo! to Big Commerce. Now we have a high level of warnings and errors from the crawl. Few are mentioning sites I never seen before on the Yahoo! platform. I also notice that the pages crawled has doubled. How can I fix or did I do something wrong with migration? I was running the website with minimal errors and now overwhelmed with errors all the error updates. If I can get some assistance on what could be wrong, I would greatly appreciate. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | ShopChameleon0 -
Site Hosting Question
We are UK based web designers who have recently been asked to build a website for an Australian Charity. Normally we would host the website in the UK with our current hosting company, but as this is an Australian website with an .au domain I was wondering if it would be better to host it in Australia. If it is better to host it in Australia, I would appreciate if someone could give me the name of a reasonably priced hosting company. Thanks Fraser
Technical SEO | | fraserhannah0