SEO/multiple domains - Need advice on a big site/sites I'm working on for a client

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  • SEO
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I have a client with:

a) 2 somewhat "perceived" very different core product/service offerings and
b) 85 locations across the country

They have a blah, blah corporate website, but last year one of the locations in Chicago went a bit "rogue" and created their own, individual website just for themselves specifically for just 1 of their product offerings (the company is well known for the other product offering and they were trying to get more exposure on the 2nd one). Result? Phenomenal! Now currently ranked in top spot on what basically amounts to a simple website that is content rich. The domain name included the service keywords and the city (so, as an example, "chicagocountertops.com".

Of course, they now want to recreate this across ALL their locations. They want me to create individual sites for each city/location. They'd like each site to be separately maintained by that location's staff and will contain unique content such as promotions, contact info, etc. They want users in those locations (say, a user in Dallas) to see that location's site when keying in say "dallas countertops". They do NOT want the user to see the corporate site as they don't feel it gives a "community" experience. In other words, they want the Dallas users to find the "dallascountertops.com" site and really feel connected to that location, to feel like they've met the staff, recognize the street view picture of the building, take advantage of that city specific promotion, etc...

They DO want consistency - i.e., one basic design shared by all sites, and of course there would be some "shared" type content (i.e., product offerings). I'm terrified of duplicate content so I don't want to carbon copy one template across 70 cities - but, actually, this is what they want, with the exception of course that each site would have *some* unique content but obviously we're still talking about a particular 'widget/service" so some content will be the same.

I'm trying to determine best practice here- the way I see it, I have 3 options:

1.) I thought about having a main site that focuses and serves the shared content and then creating 70 microsites for each city location. This is actually what they WANT and allows them keyword rich domain names for each city (i.e., tampacountertops.com, nashvillecountertops.com, etc). They also want to structure this way because each location will be wholly responsible for the site itself - including hosting, maintenance, updates, future promotional content - i.e., each location is very autonomous (although it is not a franchise, the business tends to operate in many fundamental ways like one). However, I keep thinking this may still seem dangerous and Google may still view this type of structure as spamming (although there is legitimate reason for this type of structure).

2.) So, because I'm worried about this, I thought about setting up a wordpress multi site - either as sub-domains or sub-directories - with a main site that contains all the authoritative (and shared) content like product descriptions and photo galleries, but having each city location as "microsite" of sorts via sub-domain or sub-directories. So, the example for sub-domains would be www.countertops.com and the sub-domains would be dallas.countertops.com (with 2-3 pages of content - i.e., contact form just for dallas, promotional info just for dallas, service info, etc.) I read that at one point, google viewed sub-domains as separate domains so this might help local searches - but I also read conflicting information that is no longer true. SEO IS VERY IMPORTANT, obviously, and want to give my client the best bang for their buck. I really don't know is sub-domains will help or hurt? I need advice here. Also, I will be claiming each city location via google local - can I claim a sub-domain as a site for a specific city location?

3.) I also thought about just making one large SITE, again using wordpress, but instead of using multi-site, I would use "posts" to serve product descriptions, image galleries, etc., but I would simply set up a "page" for each city that has child pages (to emulate a microsite structure, but within the parent site). So this structure would be: www.countertops.com/granite and countertops.com/corian but the cities would have "countertops.com/dallas" and "countertops.com/dallas/contact" and "countertops.com/dallas/promotions" - And, again, I'd want to claim each on google local so can we claim "www.countertops.com/dallas" as site specific to a city location?

I am in serious need of advice here because I need to get started and this decision obviously impacts how I design the site(s)!! ;-) I have scoured the web and read for days and everyone seems to have a different "take" on how to approach. Ugh!!!

Thank you SO Much!!
#advice #big #client #content #domains #duplicate #multiple #seo #seo or multiple #site or sites #working
  • Profile picture of the author jlazarus17
    Bumping for advice? This got put on back burner in June but now it's back and, of course, they want it yesterday ;-)

    Glad to have the business! Want to make sure I'm pointing them in the right direction!!

    Warrior advice greatly appreciated!!
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