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I have a client that gets great ranking in a certain city mainly because that is their main corporate office and the address and city name is all over the place in their content.  I am about to embark on getting them higher ranking in other cities as well and am looking for the best approach to make that possible.

My thoughts...

1- create seperate content for the other locations, but the body information would probably end up looking duplicate, but I could be more specific with title, description and content realting to that specific city.

2- add the additional cities to the current content???

Need some expert advice.

Thanks

the main problem is that the companies have differnt name and therefore different domain names, but will both point to the same site, but different landing page.  The content is different on both sites (one spanish and one english).

I have 2 companies that essential do the same thing. They have different names and different domain names.  One is a USA company and the other is a South American Company.

My intnent was to create a single site with both english and spanish content and then create a english home page and a spanish homepage.  I was hoping to direct the spanish domain name to the spanish homepage and the english to the english homepage.

This way I will only have one site to maintain  - one ecommerce site to maintain and can direct teh links to a single site - although they will essentially be kinda different.

My question is... what are the pluses and minuses of doing this?  Would I better creating 2 separate sites? is there going to be an issue with google maybe seeing duplicate content although the pages are seperate for each language?

Any other considerations that I just wasnt smart enough to think of?

For me the translation is the easy part. I just need to make sure that I am architecting the system the best way possible from the start.  would hate to have to come back and decide to change it all up because I didnt think of something.

thanks for your comments!

We are building a Joomla site for a customer that has an USA division and a South American division (english and spanish).  The products and services are the same.

I am trying to understand the best posible way to architect the site.

1- Do I create 1 site with duplicate pages in different languages? Does Google recognize that it is duplicate content if different languages are used?

2- Do I create seperate sub domains for each language?

3- Should I just use Google translate to translate the pages as required?  The problem here is that each site has a different geographic target.

any other alternatives?

This post make me laugh because I have been in this position before and I go the same feedback as you are getting.

My conclusion was simple.  I absolutely agree that the most crucial aspect (and probably the biggest pain in teh butt) is very thorough documentation or roadmap of what it is that you want to accomplish.  IN my experience this road map at first included everything under the sun - all the cool bells and whistles.

Prioritize those features - take the top priorites and look at the top CMS solutions - all of them have been talked about here.  Make sure that there are CMS extensions that solve your business needs and remember the goal of the site.... probably to sell something or teach something or some combination of the two.  SAY THE GOAL OUT LOAD SO YOU DONT FORGET and get caught up in all the cool things these systems can do.

Pick the CMS that solves the business issues and fulfills the requirements of your document.

I personally love Joomla because it is very mature, has lots of great extensions, is very customizable.

Wordpress easiest - remember, that doesn't always mean best

Drupal most customizable

Joomla somewhere sandwiched in between

GOOD LUCK!!!!

thanks!!!!

these are all important issues to consider, but from an SEO perspective... are there reasons to put them all together?

¡Thanks!

First timer and new to SEO

We  are designing a website for a customer in south america that has 3 distinct divisions.  We want to develop the site in the most SEO effective way possible.

Each division will have its own keyword focus, its own associations and its own links. They will all link to each other from the main page company.com.

we were thinking of creating 4 different seperate domains such as...

www.company.com - basic high level company information with links to the other external sites below.

www.company-contructionsoftware.com

www.company-itservices.com

www.company-graphicdesign.com

so my questions are:

1- is it better in the long run to have domains that have the search terms in the url like specified above? We can optimize for the main site as well as the individual sites separately

2- would the result be the same using subdomains? for example, itservices.company.com

3- possibly hosting the 3 different sites in different locations?

We want to make sure that we are building using the the best possible architecture for future optimization and internet marketing.

What are the pros and cons?

Thanks!!!!