Struggling with SEO and Rebranding...

[seo.help]

I have a question for you... have a client who originally I built and ranked individual websites for them for multiple services. One website was for auto sales, one for auto repair and one for auto detailing. But the names were all different and individual.

They decided to rebrand and they wanted to bring them all under one common name. And they were talked into building a new website under the one common brand name and put all the content under that website and have since 302 redirected everything. I know.... should have been 301's

So of course now I have to go back in there and repair the SEO damage as everything has now tanked. So here is my dilemma

I have the following brands/services - all located same city, some in different physical locations

new website is XYZ.com

XYZ Car Sales - located at 123 any street

XYZ Auto Repair - located at 123 any street

XYZ Auto Detailing - located at 456 any street

XYZ Customizing - available at 456 any street

Should I just build out the content on the XYZ.com domain and use subfolders so XYZ.com/customizing, XYZ.com/autosales, XYZ.com/autodetailing etc or should I use subdomains autodetailing.XYZ.com, etc

And as a final question to this scenario... how does this affect the Google+ business pages for each of these businesses?

If i use the subfolder method, should I have the XYZ Car Sales, XYZ Auto Detailing all point to the XYZ.com root or should each Google business page point to the actual subfolder?

And how will this affect SEO? If I build out the Auto Detailing section for example I was thinking it would look like this

XYZ.com/auto-detailing
XYZ.com/auto-detailing/about-us
XYZ.com/auto-detailing/services
XYZ.com/auto-detailing/contact-us

Will that be good enough for Google to properly link the content to that particular section/brand assuming things like Title Tags/ H1 tags, etc are done properly? Keeping in mind we have Google business pages already in existence for

XYZ Auto Sales
XYZ Auto Detailing
XYZ Customizing
XYZ Auto Repairs

Your help will be hugely appreciated, Ive searched and searched, but most things seem to lead back to multi location SEO questions, this is multi-location but also multi brand and different business names (although quite similar)

[MiriamEllis]

Hey Paul!

If this is actually just one business, it should only ever have had 1 Google+ Local page. Google+ Local pages are meant to represent physical locations ... not a menu of services. So 1 physical location = 1 Google+ local Page. Unfortunately, if I'm understanding this correctly, Google would consider this situation of multiple pages to be a violation of their guidelines:

https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en

So, the best thing in this scenario would be to consolidate everything into a single website, build out unique content on the website for each service offered, but have just 1 Google+ Local page and a set of additional citations to support the single physical location. Now, if I've misunderstood and this is actually several different physical locations, please let me know.

[kwoolf]

The only addition to Richard's comments would be to keep domains short and add keywords as appropriate. A single "About Us" page, XYZ.com/about-us, would be preferable to four different pages, i.e., XYZ.com/auto-detailing/about-us, XYZ.com/auto-sales/about-us, etc.

You might want to check Google page policy about having multiple pages for the same business. That might have consequences.

The biggest concern I would have as a business here is site visitors going to the wrong physical location because the website wasn't clear. That would really upset visitors, so this company should have SOPs in place in case this happens to minimize complaints. You'd be right to emphasize this in your site design suggestions.

[Dezzign]

Sounds like a big job Firstly, I would go with the sub-folder approach (and by sub-folder, I mean inner page) as inner pages can bleed more authority from the root domain than sub-domains can. You'll be able to rank an inner page easier than a sub domain. I also think that the sub-domain approach is confusing for referring offline clients. Telling someone to go to newsite.mysite.com is more confusing than saying, go to mysite.com forward slash newsite.

As far as all of your local Seo is concerned just be sure that the relevant addresses are on the relevant pages. Don't let the address of the primary site pollute the other business pages where that address doesn't belong on.

Yes, the rankings have crashed but getting rid of those 302 redirects and changing them to 301's will have a significant impact. All you have to do is ensure that any old page redirects to the most relevant new page. Don't bother redirecting the old about us page to the new homepage, just redirect it to the new about-us page where it should redirect to.

The folder structure that you suggested for your new pages is fine, and I would go with that too. It's crucial that your new inner pages have the right address and phone number details on the front end. Ensure your Schema markup is also properly optimized. You want to make sure that when you run an inner page through the structured data testing tool that it's showing all of the correct Schema address and business details. As long as you pay close attention to this I think you should see minimal disruption to your Google local rankings.

I would also go to your Google local pages and put the right URL in the about us section (XYZ.com/auto-detailing). Make sure you re-upload the verification file again to the correct page (XYZ.com/auto-detailing).