Multi-Locations Business Internet Presence
-
We are at a crossroad and it's time to decide which direction to travel. We had 4 physical locations represented by 3 websites, August 1st we now have 6 addresses and are going to redesign our websites. Heritage Printing .com is our primary and does very well in DC for printing & signage. Heritage Printing Charlotte .com does well in NC for signs.
How would you proceed?
- Build 2 more websites for a total of 5: Heritage Custom Signs & Heritage Custom Signs DC .coms
- Build a unified site under Heritage Printing .com (w/ subdomains or locations folders)
I fear losing our Internet Presence and Page Rank w/ Google by unifying but also fear fueling the ever growing fragmentation of our brand. FYI: We recently Trade Marked Heritage Printing & our logo
So fellow Mozzers, what do you recommend and how would you proceed?
TY in advance
KJr
-
Hi Kevin!
I apologize for not noticing your thread earlier. Don't know how I missed it!
You are describing so well what happens when a multi-site approach begins to get out of hand. While you could, of course, run 5 different websites, the long term health of the brand is likely going to be best served by consolidation, with proper redirects being set up from the old sites to the new umbrella site, and citations being corrected to reflect the change of URL. You'll likely want to dedicate good resources to earning some new links, while you're at it, to the main site, to strengthen your hand, and a dedicated review acquisition campaign would be smart to throw into this mix, too.
Could you lose rankings? Yes, it's possible, but you can mitigate this as much as possible with proper redirects.
The major benefit of consolidation will be that, going forward, every single action you take will go to strengthening the brand, rather than you having to slice that up 5 different ways. Your goal will be to become the dominant player in your city for everything you do with an incredibly powerful website backed up with a unified marketing plan.
I do recommend going with folders rather than subdomains. It's simpler.
Hoping you'll get some other opinions from our community, and that this one helps. Wishing you luck in the work ahead!
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
-
Handling multiple locations in the footer
I have a client with several locations. Should I include only the main office's address in the footer? The client is wanting to add them all.
On-Page Optimization | | SearchParty0 -
How to Structure URL's for Multiple Locations
We are currently undergoing a site redesign and are trying to figure out the best way to structure the URL's and breadcrumbs for our many locations. We currently have 60 locations nationwide and our URL structure is as follows: www.mydomain.com/locations/{location} Where {location} is the specific street the location is on or the neighborhood the location is in. (i.e. www.mydomain.com/locations/waterford-lakes) The issue is, {location} is usually too specific and is not a broad enough keyword. The location "Waterford-Lakes" is in Orlando and "Orlando" is the important keyword, not " Waterford Lakes". To address this, we want to introduce state and city pages. Each state and city page would link to each location within that state or city (i.e. an Orlando page with links to "Waterford Lakes", "Lake Nona", "South Orlando", etc.). The question is how to structure this. Option 1 Use the our existing URL and breadcrumb structure (www.mydomain.com/locations/{location}) and add state and city pages outside the URL path: www.mydomain.com/{area} www.mydomain.com/{state} Option 2 Build the city and state pages into the URL and breadcrumb path: www.mydomain.com/locations/{state}/{area}/{location} (i.e www.mydomain.com/locations/fl/orlando/waterford-lakes) Any insight is much appreciated. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | uBreakiFix0 -
Meta Geotag - two locations on one website
I have a client that I would like to do a Meta Geotag for. They have two locations. Am I able to do two meta geotags on their website? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | OOMDODigital0 -
One site, one location, multiple languages - best approach?
Hey folks, Has anyone created a multilingual site targeted at a single location? I have a site that I need to create which is targeting users in Spain. There are going to need to be English and Spanish versions of the text. My thoughts would be to handle it this way: 1. Geolocate the entire site to spain 2. Have the english content in a folder /en/ 3. Have the spanish content in a folder /es/ As far as I am aware the same content in another language is not considered duplicate content and Google should handle folks searching in spanish or english and show them the correct landing page. Sounds easy enough in principle but I also have these other options to seemingly solidify the approach: 4. Add: rel="alternate" hreflang="x" (3) 5. Add language information to a sitemap (4) Again, none of that seems terribly difficult but would welcome any feedback and particularly experience of multilingual sites targeting a single location. Thanks all Marcus References and info 1. Multi Regional:
On-Page Optimization | | Marcus_Miller
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2010/03/working-with-multi-regional-websites.html 2. Multi Language:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2008/08/how-to-start-multilingual-site.html 3. http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077 4. http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=26208650 -
SEO Location Pages - ALT Image Tag Question
Hello Guru's, I have a Hire Website whereby you can rent products online. I have created different Location pages for these which are in essence the same pages page but with different location specific urls, title tags , on page content etc etc. This helps me to rank for local search. These location pages also display 20 products per page. My question is Should I make the ALT IMAGE TEXT location specific for each of the 20 products . Example - Steam Cleaner Rental in "location" or should I only amend a few of the Atl Image Texts to be location specific. I don't want to come accross as spammy in google eyes but I also don't want to be seen as having duplicate content , images etc etc What do you think ? thanks Sarah.
On-Page Optimization | | SarahCollins0 -
Question about Multi-national Websites
I am about to work on a multi-national site and need some more information about what I should consider regarding: content keyword research anything else My biggest question is regarding content. The company would like a UK version of the site with a different URL, but plan to keep the content essentially the same, with the exception of a few minor details. In this case, would duplicate content still be an issue? If so, any suggestions for working around this? Any strategy information on multi-national sites would be really helpful. Thank you! Erin
On-Page Optimization | | HiddenPeak0 -
Video Location
Is there any benefits or disadvantages to embedding product videos directly on the site vs. having them pop out in a separate window?
On-Page Optimization | | ClaytonKendall0 -
Multi-language domain strategy crossroad
I've come to a crossroads with a multilingual domain strategy. Most of you know, Canada has two official languages; English & French. I'm trying to decide on two domain structures to handle languages: 1. Create sub-directory folders for both languages: www.sitename.ca/en/ www.sitename.ca/fr/ Take into account that all page names will be in their respective language. or 2. Create a single sub-directory folder for French only: www.sitename.ca www.sitename.ca/fr/ I'm leaning towards Option #2 because English is our target and want to give those pages more "weight" rather than pushing them down another level (flatter site structure for primary pages). Yes, I could also have all French pages at the root but I think having them a) in one sub-directory is easier to manage and b) SE (specifically Google) likes the division better for languages. I'm just not sure if there's a point to doing it for English too. Note: There'll be several hundred pages for each language. What's best practice (of course) and is there a difference if any....or was this just long winded for nothing? Thanks for any insights.
On-Page Optimization | | Bragg0