Collapsing Location-Specific Subdomains
-
My client has 24 separate subdomains for its nationwide business, one for each specific location.
Much of the content is very similar, as the site serves as a lead-generator for rental reservations.
After years of suggesting the approach of using one domain, we have finally gotten the client onboard to eliminating the subdomains and maintaining a subdirectory/page approach for location-specific content and allowing universal content to live at the root domain.
I've been looking for any case studies that have any watch-outs or demonstrated benefits when collapsing domestic subdomains (phoenix.client.com; albuquerque.client.com, etc.) into the root, and have been fairly unsuccessful so far.
We will be setting up a rigorous 301 redirect tree to ensure we retain as much link juice as possible from any existing subdomain-specific inbound links.
Any advice/guidance to help set expectations of what will shake down from this change? It feels like we should see increased domain authority and less cannibalization, as the client ranks nationally for important broad-level keywords, with significantly higher DA at the root level than any tracked competitors, but I'm a little nervous about how localized search results will be affected.
Thank you!
-
My guess is you'll see an improvement in rankings moving to a subfolder structure but a possible decrease in the # of results you get on page one (if the subdomains were ranking there previously).
-
My company recently created a website for a huge moving company with many locations. The site's very successful, in part for a few things. Of those, some are pretty conventional:
- Create location-specific pages with unique content about that location - be it your business' location's history, about the town/city, etc. **Do not **allow these pages to be similar to one another. They must have unique, rich content.
- Depending on the amount of locations, you may be able to add those new location-based pages in the footer. I'd say after 20 or so, it might become excessive.
- If you have a blog, you should definitely write about those locations, any new openings, events happening in the areas, etc.
- It should go without saying, but make sure to optimize for each location where appropriate. However, do not over-optimize for any area unless it's the main hub for business.
- Schema. Schema all over the location information.
- Make sure your 301s are organized and all-encompassing.
- Not at all necessary, but occasions like this are great for reviewing your website's design and content.
There's surely a lot more you can do, but this list is a good starting point, I'd say. Hope this helps!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Multiple Locations Same City
I have a local seo campaign im trying to reconfigure. Lets say i am a dwi lawyer and i have multiple locations. These are merely examples for cities and keywords. Home page is Criminal defense lawyer - this is the term we should be targeting. Maybe i can target the state name, but i am losing so much SEO weight by not leveraging this home page as the main page for this term. Then we have a location page in south Boston that is "S Boston DWI lawyer" as the title tag. Then we have another location page north Boston that is "N Boston DWI Lawyer" as the title tag. I can leave the city name off the home page title tag, but then what do i do with these pages that are pretty much competing with one another? I know the home page will not rank since none of the locations point to it, and only to a location page. I was thinking about creating one page with both locations and having both G map listings go directly there, but that doesn't make sense because other locations do not have the same setup. Or choosing the most central location and pointing that to the home page and let the rest have a locations page. Finally the home page will not rank well for any major terms. The location page does rank for the fictional south Boston DWI lawyer, but the other listing does not show up. The home page does not show up in the first ten pages either. One other aspect is that the home page ranks for terms that I am not even targeting. These pages are all targeted on specific keywords so that they do not overlap or compete, but some pages are the services main outline, but the location pages have their own version. I have removed all mentions of the same keyword from the home page. I made a few wchanges about 2 weeks ago and already noticed movement in rankings days later.
Local Website Optimization | | waqid0 -
Business has multiple locations, but want to rank for commutable cities, geographies
Hello, The business I am working for has multiple locations, but the service they provide is one that you would commute for. At present, they have 20 or so pages with yucky geographical keyword stuffed content (think "New York computer services" and they are based out of a suburb (maybe 40 miles away). For some ridiculous reason, some of these pages are ranking for exact match search terms? We are in the process of revamping the whole site-taking approx five sites and integrating into one mega site. I want to first, figure out the best strategy for ranking for the region that each is in and serve, without being spammy like the previous SEO. I want to eliminate the spammy pages without losing the rank and link juice. What is the most appropriate and above-board strategy? These are my thoughts. Should I: 1. Keep the pages, but tweak them enough to make the content quality? If I do, should they be geo pages? Should they be "locations served", statistics of the area, etc? 2. Group the pages according to region (one page per region) that are location-oriented and tweaked to still include the terms they were ranking for (without the spammy look and stuffing), along with a map, etc? And then, I have to figure out how to redirect so not to lose the value we have now for some of them. The company deals with treatment for addiction, so in recommending and tips-remember that our audience will commute by car, and eventually (hopefully) by plane. 😉 Thank you so so much for any and all help you can provide! Sorry for such a long description!
Local Website Optimization | | lfrazer1231 -
Which URL and rel=canonical structure to use for location based product inventory pages?
I am working on an automotive retailer site that displays local car inventory in nearby dealerships based on location. Within the site, a zip code is required to search, and the car inventory is displayed in a typical product list that can be filtered and sorted by the searcher to fit the searchers needs. We would like to structure these product inventory list pages that are based on location to give the best chance at ranking, if not now, further down the road when we have built up more authority to compete with the big dogs in SERP like AutoTrader.com, TrueCar.com, etc. These higher authority sites are able to rank their location based car inventory pages on the first page consistently across all makes and models. For example, searching the term "new nissan rogue" in the Los Angeles, CA area returns a few location based inventory pages on page 1. The sites in the industry that are able to rank their inventory pages will display a relatively clean looking URL with no redirect that still displays the local inventory like this in the SERP:
Local Website Optimization | | tdastru
https://www.autotrader.com/cars-for-sale/New+Cars/Nissan/Rogue
but almost always use a rel=canonical tag within the page to a page with a location parameter attached to the end of the URL like this one:
https://www.autotrader.com/cars-for-sale/New+Cars/Nissan/Rogue/Los+Angeles+CA-90001"/>
I'm having a hard time figuring out why sites like this example have their URLs and pages structured this way. What would be the best practice for structuring the URL and rel=canonical tags to be able to rank for and display location based inventory pages for cars near the searcher?0 -
Looking to create a "best practice" doc on location pages. Anyone know of a useful resource?
I'm working for a few regional brands and would like to create a best practice doc for the structure of a location page. Has anyone seen anything recent regarding a structure for local, regional and national pages? Thanks all, Kevin
Local Website Optimization | | Kevin.Bekker1 -
Rank Tracking URLs from specific locations
Hi, i'm trying to report on the ranks of my local landing page URLs within my website. What is the best way of seeing this data from certain locations around the UK? For example - I have a landing page that is targeting London. How can I see how that ranks in the SERPs from various locations within the Greater London area? Can this be done accurately on MOZ or SEMrush? I would like to see how other people track their local pages for ranking locally. Thanks
Local Website Optimization | | SeoSheikh0 -
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 -
Ideas on creating location based service pages for SEO value while not worrying about local SEO?
Hello and thanks for reading! We have a bit of a rare issue, where we are a nationwide distributor but have a local side that handles all tristate area requests, the sales that happen via local basically don't impact the online side, so we're trying to not focus on local SEO but in a sense worry about abroad local SEO. We want to try the location based service pages, but not for every state, at most 5 states and inside those pages target 2 to 3 big cities. Is this a waste of time to even think about or is this something that can be done with a careful touch?
Local Website Optimization | | Deacyde0 -
Different page for each service at each location? Where does it end!
If we have 15 different locations and 10 different services, do we need to make keyword targeted landing pages for each combination? Is that actually the best method or is there some alternative? For example, if we are a law office specializing in slip and falls and car accidents, do we need a page for EACH location for each service (ie. Miami Car Accident Lawyer, Miami Slip and Fall Lawyer, Orlando Slip and Fall Lawyer, Orlando Car Accident Lawyer) etc. to maximize our ranking potential in each location? Is there a better way or are we left with this until Google gets "smarter"?
Local Website Optimization | | RickyShockley0