Do I make this umbrella site?
- Dog Training Utah - CommuniCanine. A Utah based dog training company. We train dogs locally here in Utah and our reputation has extended outside the state enough to where we get a decent amount of people who send us their dogs from out of state to train or fly me out to them to work with their dogs.
- Dog Training and Puppy Training Online. We've taken our methods and filmed them and put them on DVDs. This is an authority site with lots of articles, blog posts, free videos, etc.
Here are my challenges:
- DogBehaviorOnline gets easily 20x more traffic than CommuniCanine but makes FAR less money. CommuniCanine brings in $10's of thousands per month which is easier to do with less traffic because our average customer is worth $1500 or so. The site converts well, about $30-$40 per visitor but the ability to scale is more difficult as it's a service business and you can't just go out and hire a new dog trainer when business scales up.
- DogBehaviorOnline is all screwed up. I know it. Don't bother to tell me. It does an awful job at letting people know what they're there for, has an awful bounce rate, doesn't funnel people in the right directions, etc. But with the amount of traffic it gets I'm convinced there is $10's of thousands waiting.
CommuniCanine generally gets Utah traffic and DogBehaviorOnline generally gets national and international traffic. Nearly all of it is organic on both sites.
I'm considering creating one site that is an umbrella site that encompasses both. The reasons I WANT to do this are:
- Neither site brands ME very well. I want to be a central figure that has a system, both in person and DVD, that is the best out there for training a dog.
- It's disjointed. I've got these offerings here, those there, etc. I want to bring it all under one roof for more cohesion.
My concerns, and the reason I'm posting are:
- Will I lose my organic traffic? Let's say I name the pages the same, do 301 redirects, etc. am I at risk of losing rankings and traffic? If so, how difficult is that to get back?
- Is it stupid to have one product I'm trying to sell nationwide and one service I'm trying to sell locally and have them under one roof? Will this further confuse people? If someone in Utah happens upon the site will they have a hard time seeing that we train dogs locally? If someone in Iowa hops on the site will they have a hard time thinking we're anything but a Utah dog training company?
I'm stressed right now. We've got 6 employees who depend on the local business and I'm worried that by tweaking what we have I'll put their jobs in jeopardy. I'm also worried that I'm leaving money on the table if I don't do a better job at creating a more cohesive offer to the market, both local and national.
I'd love to hear your collective wisdom.
Thanks.
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Salt Lake City, Utah Dog Training
Salt Lake City, Utah Dog Training