Local Site Linking to Corporate Site In Main Menu - Bad for SEO?
-
Hi,
We have 'local' websites for different countries (UK, DE, FR, AP, US etc.) and a corporate website, the local websites are going to be linking back to the corporate website in the main menu (think about us, terms and conditions kind of pages). Any local products will have their own pages on the local website but global products will be linked back to the corporate website.
We will be placing an indication the user will be going to another website next to those menu links that go to the corporate website.
Is there any drawback to this for SEO? Should we use nofollow in the menu structure of regional websites for these links?
Thanks for your help.
-
Please, could you mark as a 'good answer' if you felt it helpful?
It would be disastrous, to be honest. Not only would it completely confuse teh customer continually flicking from local to the central site, it would ruin the local SEO.
Good Luck
Nigel
-
Hi Nigel,
Thanks for this, the good news is we do already have all the local sites in subfolders and we do already use href lang tags (sorry, probably should have added this to the question).
Unfortuantely we lack the resources internally to manage content locally which is why this new approach has been suggested (and I'm not a fan of it), I suspect the search engines wont like it either. I just need some ammunition to take back to the team to argue for an alternative.
This is helpful though, thank you!
Vicky
-
Hi Vicky
Yes, you will completely destroy all local sites and the main site if you get this wrong.
1. The local sites should all be subdirectories of the main site so, for example, website.com/uk, website/com/fr etc.
2. Each site should be a unique entity, all support pages should be duplicated locally as well as listing of all products and services (local and global), with no links back to the mother site apart from maybe one in the 'about us' to show that there is a link between the two sites.
3. Add hreflang directives on every site page to its other versions (all of them) and an hreflang="x-default" to the main site. You need to do this so that Google does not consider each one a duplicate of the other.These will specify the location and language of the local sites.
The proposal that there will be multiple links back to the mother site will create an SEO nightmare - just don't do it. (Also, Imagine a basket with multiple items in, some from a local site and others from the mother site! - nightmare)
I hope that helps
Regards Nigel
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
-
Local SEO for Multiple Locations - Is this the best approach?
Hi everyone! I previously have worked with single-location companies, and am now working for a company that is continuously growing and adding new locations. We are a financial institution that currently has 12 locations, and we should have 15+ locations by year-end 2017. Seeing as we have all of these locations, I thought the following approach would be the best for increasing our presence in local search. Our primary keyword is "credit union in location". Our search traffic has increased heavily over last year, but is down from the beginning of the year. I've gone through and done the following: Freshened up the content on the main website Created pages for each of our locations around April-end Attributed these location page URLs to our Google My Business locations Verified each location Wrote unique content for each page Our primary keyword rankings seem to fluctuate weekly. My next steps are to get our web design company to add the following: Structured Data on all location pages The ability to change SEO title and meta descriptions on location pages Sitemap (there is none currently, and I've been fighting them to get one added because it isn't needed.) I also plan on utilizing Moz Local to manage our local listings. After this is done I plan on finding ways for us to build links for each location, like the chambers of commerce in each city and local partnerships. Is this the best approach for our overall goal, and should I continue? Is there anything I should change about our current approach? I appreciate the help!
Local Website Optimization | | PelicanStateCU0 -
Site Not Rankings After a Few Months
I have a client site that I am beating my head against the wall for right now. Three months into a 100% white hat campaign, we can't get him ranking in the top 150. Here's the cliffsnotes: Built a new wordpress website All on page SEO has been done and score an A+ for his primary kws Robots.txt is setup correctly .htaccess is setup correctly new domain multiple 95 DA, 50 PA links from reputable, national sites. Yext Local listings SSL, CDN, Speed optimized Has 19 pages indexed by Google Posting one blog a week for him Granted his primary keyword is a hyper competitive kw, but still, I've been doing this for 8 years and never seen a guy be stuck on the 16th page for so long for the sort of links we are building him. I'm genuinely stumped here and could use some help.
Local Website Optimization | | BrianJGomez0 -
Does multiple sites that relate to one company hurt seo
I know this has been asked and answered but my situation is a little different. I am a local electrical contractor. I specialize in a service and not a product. Competition is high in the local market due to the other electrical contractors that have well seasoned sites with very good DA/PA. Although new to the web I am not new to the trade. Throughout years almost back to the AOL dialup days I have been collecting domain names for this particular purpose. Now I want to put them to good use. Being an electrical contractor, there are many different facets of work and services we provide. My primary site is empireelec.com A second site I threw online overnight with minimal content is jacksonvillelightingrepair.com. Although it is a fresh site, there is minimal content and I have put almost zero effort in to it. It appears to be ranking for keywords a lot quicker. That leads me to believe I should utilize my other domain jacksonvillefloridaelectrician.com and target just the keyword Jacksonville Florida Electrician. It leads me to believe I should use jacksonvillebeachelectrician.com for targeting electricians in jacksonville beach. And again with jacksonvilleelectricianservice.com I can provide a unique phone number for each site. Am I going about this all wrong? Everything I read says no,no,no but I feel my situation is a little more unique.
Local Website Optimization | | empireelec1 -
What's with Google? All metrics in my favor, yet local competitors win.
In regards to local search with the most relevant keyword, I can't seem to get ahead of the competition. I've been going through a number of analytics reports, and in analyzing our trophy keyword (which is also the most relevant, to our service and site) our domain has consistently been better with a number of factors. There is not a moz report that I can find that doesn't present us as the winner. Of course I know MOZ analytics and google analytics are different, but I'm certain that we have them beat with both. When all metrics seem to be in our favor, why might other competitors continue to have better success? We should be dominating this niche industry. Instead, I see a company using blackhat seo, another with just a facebook page only, and several others that just don't manage their site or ever add unique, helpful content. What does it take to get ahead? I'm pretty certain I've been doing everything right, and doing everything better than our local competitors. I think google just has a very imperfect algorythm, and the answer is "a tremendous amount of patience" until they manage to get things right.
Local Website Optimization | | osaka730 -
Subdomain for ticketing of a client website (how to solve SEO problems caused by the subdomain/domain relationship)
We have a client in need of a ticketing solution for their domain (let's call it www.domain.com) which is on Wordpress - as is our custom ticket solution. However, we want to have full control of the ticketing, since we manage it for them - so we do not want to build it inside their original Wordpress install. Our proposed solution is to build it on tickets.domain.com. This will exist only for selling and issuing the tickets. The question is, is there a way to do this without damaging their bounce rate and SEO scores?
Local Website Optimization | | Adam_RushHour_Marketing
Since customers will come to www.domain.com, then click the ticketing tab and land on tickets.domain.com, Google will see this as a bounce. In reality, customers will not notice the difference as we will clone the look and feel of domain.com Should we perhaps have the canonical URL of tickets.domain.com point to www.domain.com? And also, can we install Webmaster Tools for tickets.domain.com and set the preferred domain as www.domain.com? Are these possible solutions to the problem, or not - and if not, does anyone else have a viable solution? Thank you so much for the help.0 -
Nominet have made the geographic new TLD available for UK. How will this affect SEO?
Nominet have made a new TLD available, the .uk TLD. Some might argue that this is a cynical move by Nominet to get more money out of British businesses, but either way, we need to decide how we handle this. As I see it we have 4 options. 1. Do nothing - At the moment, only websites can register their .uk domain. That won't last for ever though, and eventually, if we don't register it, someone else will.
Local Website Optimization | | Stewart_SEO
2. Register a domain but do nothing with it.
3. Register a domain and simply redirect it to the existing .co.uk domain. I suspect this is the best option.
4. Register the .uk domain and redirect the .co.uk domain to the new domain. From a technical point of view, what is the best option? For businesses that have multi-lingual sites the 4th appears the best option but why do we need to act when we do not even know the SEO value of any of this, and where Google sit regarding the new British TLD?1 -
Single sites per location as well as group site. Should we get rid of single sites & only keep group site.
Currently we have several single sites for each of our dealership locations as well as an automotive group site linking to each location(dealership) website. Currently there is no landing page for each location on the group site. To save money we were looking into beefing up our group site and getting rid of our individual location sites. 301 redirecting them to location landing pages on the group site website. Each site has about the same authority including the group site. Each dealership location resides in the same province(state) but some locations are a 7hour drive apart so not all within the same vicinity. I want to ensure we continue to rank well in each location. I won't be able to include all geographic locations in the title tag on the homepage of the group site due to the character restrictions. What would you recommend? Keeping the individual websites per dealership location OR focusing solely on a group website. I need to ensure we continue to rank well in each city where each dealership resides. Thanks for any recommendations! It's greatly appreciated. Thanks for everyone's thoughts & opinions.
Local Website Optimization | | DCochrane1 -
What is the best type map for local SEO?
Hi mozzers, Can someone tell me which type of map is best when embedding it into your service pages? or any map is good enough? Why? Thanks guys!
Local Website Optimization | | Ideas-Money-Art0