Consolidate Local sites to one larger site
-
I am a partner in a real estate company that operates in 10 different markets across the country. Each of these markets has it's own individual domain. My question is should we consolidate each of these markets into one domain that services all markets? What would we possibly gain or lose from an organic traffic standpoint?
In some of our more established markets (Indianapolis, Las Vegas, Tampa, Orlando and Charlotte) our organic traffic accounts for 50-60% of our total traffic. In some of our newer markets (Denver, Phoenix, San Diego) it accounts for less than 15%.
We do operate under two different brand names. EasyStreet Realty and Highgarden Real Estate. EasyStreet has been around since 2000 with most of our Highgarden sites only up for 6-24 months. Another question is we are considering converting all EasyStreet divisions to Highgarden. I am a little reluctant to do so, since most of our organic traffic is coming from our EasyStreet sites. Thoughts?
You can find links to all our sites at www.easystreetrealty.com or www.highgarden.com
Thank you in advance for your insight.
-
Thank you Miriam. We have switched from one brand to another (EasyStreet to Highgarden) in a couple of our markets. We implemented a 301 redirect strategy for those sites and saw very little effect on our organic traffic.
Thanks again for your input.
-
Hi EasyStreet,
What makes this a tough call is the sheer size of the company with markets in different states. In nearly all cases, it's better to think of brand first - by having all your websites assets on a single domain, then everything you do on that site for all of your markets is going to build the strength and authority of your brand. For example, McDonald's has a main corporate website you can search if you're looking for a specific location. They do have other sites for other purposes, but their locations across the US are all represented by a single site. You could definitely call them a strong brand, and it's a marketing example to follow, even if you're a plumber with just 3 locations.
It sounds to me, from what you've written, that right now, your firm is in a transitional period trying to determine whether to consolidate two brands into one, possibly. I would get this matter settled before you start changing websites, so that if you then further decide to consolidate multiple sites into one, you're going forward either with one or two clear brands.
Should you decide to consolidate, the main thing is going to be to make certain you have studied and implemented redirect protocols from the old domains to the main new one. Unfortunately, this is not my area of expertise. I am going to ask others to chime in with more skill in this area, but in sum, it's generally considered a best practice to go with a single site, but there can be nuances when dealing with a multi-state company that may not make that the best fit for every scenario.
-
Here are some posts that I found useful when asking the same question:
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
-
301ing one site's links to another
Hi, I have one site with a well-established link profile, but no actual reason to exist (site A). I have another site that could use a better link profile (site B). In your experience, would 301 forwarding all of site A's pages to site B do anything positive for the link profile/organic search of the site B? Site A is about boating at a specific lake. Site B is about travel destinations across the U.S. Thanks! Best... Michael
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
New site failing to rank - could this be why?
I have a new client site that is not appearing anywhere in the top 100 for its main keywords. ASSUMING that this is not an issue with optimization or link quality, I am wondering whether it might be the following... The client's company has a parent company whose website has decent authority. This website links to the new (client) website. In addition, the 2 press releases we have done include links to both companies, since one was an outgrowth of the other. This is all 100% natural, so my inclination is that this is not causing the issue. But does anyone have any experience to suggest otherwise? That having website A linking to website B, and 50+ press release websites linking to both, could be causing the algorithm to throttle website Bs ability to rank? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | zakkyg0 -
Open Site Explorer - Spam analysis: need help with inbound links... from my site!
hallo, reading my spam analysis report from open explorer, I found somenthing I don't understand (please see attached image): The long list of links inside the red rectangle are inbound links with a spam score of 5 coming from my same site. How is that possible? Should I remove those links? Also , I see that many of those links are links present in the top navigation bar (about page, home page, service description etc.) or in the sidebar section of the website (categories, recent posts, recent comments). Should I treat them differently? Thank you for your time.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | micvitale0 -
Merging two existing company sites into one
Hi Moz community, I have recently started a new job for a Fire & Security company in the UK to help with their non existent SEO efforts. Currently they have two separate websites. One of the websites is for their services and the other website is for their eCommerce store selling fire alarm equipment etc. The eCommerce store is higher up in the SERPs and overall has a lot more links. It also uses a better branded domain name. As I have never attempted such a project I have a few questions. The current eCommerce store is hosted and maintained by another web company which uses their bespoke CMS. What I want to do is take the service website and merge it with the ecommerce domain, however the service site runs on wordpress, which I want to continue for its flexibility. The service page wants to be the new homepage with a link on it to go to the store. I just cant get my head around the whole operation so if anyone could give me some advice to point me in the right direction that would be great. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BradNichol0 -
SEO Blow-Up After Site Redesign
I contracted with a local web design firm - a highly recommended firm - to redo my law practice's Wordpress site. The redesign was done in early April. After the redesign I saw a large drop in rankings across all of my keywords, lost internal page rank, and had a big traffic drop. The site is www.toughtimeslawyer.com. There were a couple of issues that contributed to it; but I'm not sure how to rebuild. The internal URL structure changed completely. I wasn't aware of this until the site went live. I didn't have a sitemap for about a week, then the sitemap plugin they used was not very good and showing errors in Webmaster tools. Last week, I replaced it with Yoast's SEO plugin. The biggest problem is that they setup a subdomain old.toughtimeslawyer.com, without asking me or telling me. The subdomain had all of my content on it. It was not blocked with robots.txt; and it is being cached by Google. I just discovered it today, when I was doing something in my cpanel. I assume that this is creating a duplicate content problem with Google. I'm not sure what steps to take to recover. I am especially concerned about the subdomain old.toughtimeslawyer.com and the best want to handle it with the search engines. Thanks in advance, all advice is appreciated. I've been pulling my hair out for the last few weeks over my rankings.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ToughTimesLawyer0 -
Duplicate content across hundreds of Local sites and they all rank #1
Usually when we discuss duplicate content, we're addressing the topic of penalties or non-indexing. In this case, we're discussing ranking high with duplicate content. I've seen lots of dental, chiropractor and veterinarian sites built by companies that give them cookie cutter sites with the same copy. And they all rank #1 or #2. Here are two companies that do that:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | katandmouse
http://www.rampsites.com/rampsites/home_standard.asp?sectionid=4
http://mysocialpractice.com/about/ The later uses external blogs to provide inbound links to their clients' site, but not all services do that, in fact, this is the first time I've seen them with external blogs. Usually the blog with duplicate copy is ON SITE and the sites still rank #1. Query "Why Your Smile Prefers Water Over Soft Drinks" to see duplicate content on external blogs. Or "Remember the Mad Hatter from the childhood classic, Alice in Wonderland? Back then, the process of making hats involved using mercury compounds. Overexposure could produce symptoms referred to as being" for duplicate content on chiropractor sites that rank high. I've seen well optimized sites rank under them even though their sites have just as much quality content and it's all original with more engagement and inbound links. It appears to me that Google is turning a blind eye on duplicate content. Maybe because these are local businesses with local clientele it doesn't care that a chiropractor in NY has the same content as one in CA, just as the visitor doesn't care because the visitor in CA isn't look at a chiropractor's site in NY generally. So maybe geo-targeting the site has something to do with it. As a test, I should take the same copy and put it on a non-geo-targeted site and see if it will get indexed. I asked another Local SEO expert if she has run across this, probably the best in my opinion. She has and she finds it difficult to rank above them as well. It's almost as if Google is favoring those sites. So the question is, should all dentists, chiropractors and veterinarians give it up to these services? I shudder to think that, but, hey it's working and it's a whole lot less work - and maybe expense - for them.0 -
Yelp, yahoo, local directories..
We are currently in one location and we are moving our office. Would it be better to leave all the directories and add new listings with the new address? This way we get 2 listings until someone in this address claims a business here. or Would it be better to change all the existing to the new address?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODinosaur0 -
Local SEO for franchises
I have a client who franchises an ice cream shop. It started in Utah and there are several stores there. They are ranking well for local searches based in Utah. Now they have opened a store in Federal Way, WA. How can I get the new location to rank for local keywords on the same website?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fivestarfranchising0