Is there value in keeping a microsite for a business that has unique domains for each of their locations?

[irapasternack]

I'm taking over a site with multiple domains that are almost entirely duplicate content.  The business has a main site, then 5 different location sites with unique domain names, a slightly different homepage, then exact duplicate for the rest of the site.

Should I get rid of the individual location domains entirely, and just 301 redirect to pages on my main domain?  Or might it be worth keeping a unique microsite online at each of the location domains (with one general location page on the main url, then the location-specific info on the microsite)?

Currently, some of the location domains rank better than the main one, and in other areas the main one outranks the location domain.

[EGOL]

If inherited these sites I would probably make unique location pages on the primary domain and do a 301 redirect of the microsites to their respective pages on the main domain.

Before I did this I would first look at current rankings and if these sites are all showing kickass rankings, conversions and performing superbly then I would allow them to run "as is" until performance changed.  In that case I would improve the duplicate pages, making them unique and focused on services offered in their respective community.

[irapasternack]

Thanks for the answer...   just to clarify, we will definitely get rid of the duplicate content.   The question is if the individual location pages should be maindomain.com/location 1, maindomain.com/location2, etc., or if maindomain.com/locations should point to location1.com, location2.com, etc.

[CoreyNorthcutt]

Usually the only exception that I've seen that makes this work OK is when doing International SEO.  And even then, it's a very good idea to tell Google that you're doing it via Webmaster Tools.

If this is instead something like chicagosuperseos.com, indianapolissuperseos.com, and so forth, all with the same content, I'd say that most likely, far gone are the days of them really being able to capitalize on this kind of strategy.   Although hey, if they're dominating in the search ranks despite this, you might rationalize leaving it for now, but on a long enough timeline, I'd suspect Google will catch up to them for this, if not the very likely scenario that they have already.