Subdomain, subfolder or new domain for new location

I'd build a subfolder unless there's something unusual going on. Here's why:

If you build a subfolder, all the SEO you've done on the main site will help support the new folder and vice versa.

That's not the case with subdomains. Google considers subdomains to be new domains. The only reason to use a subdomain is if you a. get a good keyword out of it, or b. have a brand that you can extend with it (like hubspot did with their grader domain - website.grader, blog.grader, etc.)

A new website would work well if: a. they want to start a new brand, b. the product or service has a narrow focus and they can get the exact match domain (emd's are still ranking very well if the SEO is not spammy).

So, if you have a good site, that has good links, build it up. Google is in love with authority sites.

I'll give you an example. I have a client who does personal injury. We've built a good site with good links over the last two years. He wanted to add workers compensation. We added a page, put a report on it,, and wrote a press release for the report. In 5 days we had #3 (his site) and #5 (the press release) space on the prime keyword. He previously had no presence their at all. Now, it's his biggest keyword.

I've just told another account to shut down one website and add all the content to their larger site because we can rank it faster on the old site than on the new site, even though the new site has a closer name.

Tim makes some great points but I don't feel it really applies well to new locations in new cities as well. Don't get me wrong, I can tell by the way he responded he know his seo for sure.

I pretty much exclusively use sub-domains especially when a client wants to extend their presence in a new city. A sub domain is considered as Tim says a unique site that is separate from the top level domain. This is what you need especially if you are going to create listings on all the major search engines business portals, (Google, Bing, Yahoo) for the new location.

Separating the NAP ( name address phone ) from the main site is going to be important and its much more effective to do that on a sub-domain then it is a sub folder.

Hi folks,
I have precisely the same situation as the OP does. Rus Sells advises using a sub-domain in this scenario. If the decision to use a unique domain is taken, then does it make sense to use
[city][niche] dot com instead of [city].[company_name] dot com? I can see that using a sub-domain would save on domain registration fees but are there any other advantages to a sub-domain in this scenario?

Dave

I think the best answer would be to do what is most natural to Google...

I can't think of any big national companies that use subdomains for their various locations. Instead, what do they do?

Location Pages - (and NOT a subfolder with a new WP install, for example)

Here's the page structure I would set up:

Tier 1 = Home Page, About Us, FAQ, Services, Locations, Contact Us

Tier 2 (Under Locations) = Location 1 Landing Page, Location 2 Landing Page, etc. This is the page you'll plug into each respective Google+ Local profile (use separate Google accounts for each location)

Tier 3 (Under each landing page) = Staff Profiles, Services (if services are the same for each location, use a condensed service description and even include pictures of the staff that handles that particular service or add pictures of that location, include a link to the main page for that service), Contact Us (location specific, of course)

That compartmentalizes everything nicely for Google, and makes it easy for users to navigate.

There's a whole slew of stuff you want on the Location landing pages, too:

- link to KML file
- hours of operation
- contact info
- methods of payment
- social profiles, especially Google Plus

And it's worth repeating... use different Google accounts for each location.

I hope that helps.

Thank you Kung Fu Backlinks for your detailed description of how to proceed. The information about the multiple tier approach is a great help.

Why does having two separate accounts work better than a single account, in your view?

The Google Places quality guidelines for the UK makes a statement which seems relevant to this case:
"...Do not create more than one listing for each business location, either in a single account or multiple accounts..."
Google Places quality guidelines - Places for business Help

I don't think this necessarily means that Google dis-allow the practice of creating multiple accounts but they do appear to imply it won't help.
Regards,
Dave

Hi Dave,

If you read that statement carefully, you'll see that what Google prohibits is the creation of multiple listings for a single location. Each business location must only have 1 listing. In fact, it hurts your rankings to have duplicate listings, so you need to avoid that for quality control as well as effective SEO.

On the other hand, Google has no problem with separate Google accounts for each separate location. These are different locations in different Google accounts - a completely different scenario.

I find it easier to have separate Google accounts for each distinct location because it keeps things organized better:

When I do local seo work, I use the same Google account to manage the G+ local listing, the webmaster tools account, Google analytics, but most importantly... all the social media profiles and business directory submissions, etc.

Since you can only create one listing per email account with many business directories, it keeps things MUCH cleaner when I have everything for that particular business in one email. If you didn't separate things in this way, you'd have a big mess when you start on your 2nd location --> Location 2 G+ local will be in email account #1, Manta and Insiderpages account will be with email #2, Facebook account will be with email #2, G+ Page will be with email #1 perhaps... it just gets messy.

So I recommend multiple Google accounts to keep things organized, not to help with rankings

I hope that helps.