citydomain.com (multiple micro-citybased site) vs. domain.com/city (large site)

[Seofarmer]

I am planning to make a WP blog, rank it high in serp and rent ad spaces to local business. I am debating whether if I should have multiple citydomain.com (EMD) such as;

buffalo-dentist.com
longisland-dentist.com
newjersey-dentist.com
(assuming I am reside in NY)

OR

dentist.com/buffalo
dentist.com/longisland
dentist.com/newjersey

I figured that with the citydomain.com (EMD) approach, my citybased micro-site will have a fair advantage as follow;

1. Easy to build/develop
2. EMD
3. Lower risk - if google decide to sandbox/penalize me oneday, i still have other blogs running.

However, at the same time, there is probably very limited room for expansion.

I will appreciate so advice on this. Thank you very much.

[apdfranklin]

I'd personally go the larger 'authority' site route, which has been working well for me lately. If you add a lot of content to the site, and setup the internal linking structure properly, you can rank well with a relatively modest backlinking regimen.

-Adam

[patrich]

I did something similar to the authority example that you have a while back and it worked out very well.

What I did was this:

Dentist.com - 1000 word article about dentists
Dentist.com/state - Links to all the city pages in that state.
Dentist.com/state/city - 500 word article about finding a dentist in that city.

On the city page I included a big image at the top of the page that said something like: Do you run a dental practice in {city name}? Click here to list your business on this page for only $99/month.

Then when they purchase, you simply change out the image with an image based advertisement for their practice. If someone clicks the image it will take them to their site.

The reason I went that route is that the text on the page would stay the same, even after you list a new business. So you will keep your rankings for the page and if they stop paying at any point, you simply switch back to the advertise here image and wait for a new client.

[troybh]

Does google like this type of site setup. I would be scared of getting slapped if I was making money initially from "dentistdotcom". Are you planning on monotizing the site any other way ie adsense etc... Those paying customers are sure to mess up your adsense account and possibly get you adsense banned.

[Seofarmer]

Originally Posted by apdfranklin

I'd personally go the larger 'authority' site route, which has been working well for me lately. If you add a lot of content to the site, and setup the internal linking structure properly, you can rank well with a relatively modest backlinking regimen.

-Adam

Originally Posted by patrich

I did something similar to the authority example that you have a while back and it worked out very well.

What I did was this:

Dentist.com - 1000 word article about dentists
Dentist.com/state - Links to all the city pages in that state.
Dentist.com/state/city - 500 word article about finding a dentist in that city.

On the city page I included a big image at the top of the page that said something like: Do you run a dental practice in {city name}? Click here to list your business on this page for only $99/month.

Then when they purchase, you simply change out the image with an image based advertisement for their practice. If someone clicks the image it will take them to their site.

The reason I went that route is that the text on the page would stay the same, even after you list a new business. So you will keep your rankings for the page and if they stop paying at any point, you simply switch back to the advertise here image and wait for a new client.

Thanks for the inputs.
What do you write on all those pages?
I am thinking contents on dentist.com/cityA and dentist.com/cityB should be quite simliar, not to mention there is also cityC and cityD. lol.

Let say we talk about teeth whitening, so will I be posting the same article on all four cities (but targeting different keywords?)

I understand that 'spinning' might be an option, but wouldnt that become obivious to visitors that you are trying to post the same stuff on all four pages?

Thanks again

Originally Posted by troybh

Does google like this type of site setup. I would be scared of getting slapped if I was making money initially from "dentistdotcom". Are you planning on monotizing the site any other way ie adsense etc... Those paying customers are sure to mess up your adsense account and possibly get you adsense banned.

I am not sure about adsense as thats not really my goal.
As discussed earlier, I am trying to target local businesses.

[Seofarmer]

I am thinking that perhaps making micro-sites can expand into a 'private blog network'?

Although that seems to be a totally different topic here, since it requires lots of time and effort to build such a huge amount of blogs/sites.

[Adharna]

If your primary domain of the PR and backlinks uses, otherwise use the domain name with the cities

[Seofarmer]

Originally Posted by Seofarmer

Thanks for the inputs.
What do you write on all those pages?
I am thinking contents on dentist.com/cityA and dentist.com/cityB should be quite simliar, not to mention there is also cityC and cityD. lol.

Let say we talk about teeth whitening, so will I be posting the same article on all four cities (but targeting different keywords?)

I understand that 'spinning' might be an option, but wouldnt that become obivious to visitors that you are trying to post the same stuff on all four pages?

Thanks again

Just want to follow up on this. Any suggestions?

[patrich]

Yeah, for the main pages ie. the home page, state pages and some additional articles on the site I used unique content that was ordered from Text Broker.

For the city pages, where it would be very similar content anyhow, I wrote one generic article and replaced the city/state in each article. An example would be:

"Finding a dentist in Long Island is easier than you might think. There are a lot of Long Island dental offices."

"Finding a dentist in New Jersey is easier than you might think. There are a lot of New Jersey dental offices."

The key in using articles like those is to keep a high density of city names in the article. That way, when you change them out for each article they are more unique because there has been more changes.

You can setup excel to take an article and replace it with all of the city/state names automatically, but I can't remember how to do it so you would have to look around for some tutorials.

[Seofarmer]

Originally Posted by patrich

Yeah, for the main pages ie. the home page, state pages and some additional articles on the site I used unique content that was ordered from Text Broker.

For the city pages, where it would be very similar content anyhow, I wrote one generic article and replaced the city/state in each article. An example would be:

"Finding a dentist in Long Island is easier than you might think. There are a lot of Long Island dental offices."

"Finding a dentist in New Jersey is easier than you might think. There are a lot of New Jersey dental offices."

The key in using articles like those is to keep a high density of city names in the article. That way, when you change them out for each article they are more unique because there has been more changes.

You can setup excel to take an article and replace it with all of the city/state names automatically, but I can't remember how to do it so you would have to look around for some tutorials.

I see. so thats like "spinning" an article, replacing words with another words. However, with this method, I find that the 'UNIQUENESS' wouldnt be too high, since all sentence structures are pretty much the same.

Thats like having duplicated contents all over my own site?
Please advise. Thanks for your input once again