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1 website or many?

by infamous dave
14 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Right now my wife has a housecleaning business she has operated for 10 years and I operate a carpet cleaning business. We are planning to open and operate several other service businesses in the next few years. I find it beneficial to keep each branded business separated and uniquely branded but we will be setting up 1 LLC to house all the other businesses under as we grow.

Right now I have a website for my carpet cleaning business but my wife never wanted a website for her housecleaning business because she keeps a full schedule all the time with just word of mouth. We are now in the process of hiring employees and growing our businesses beyond owner/operator status so we want a web presence for each of our services.

My question is, should I keep separate websites for each individual brand or combine them all into one larger, hopefully more authoritative website? Right now landing pages for service + city seem to bring in the most traffic by far to my carpet cleaning site so I would think that if I just combined all the services to one site and have all of the different business domain names point to that site?

Anyone have any good advice or comments to offer? TIA.
#website
  • Profile picture of the author infamous dave
    Bumpity bump bump. To the Top.
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  • Profile picture of the author Marked09
    It seems closely related, you can initially create a website for your carpet cleaning business initially and just add the house cleaning business to 1 website when it's already needed.

    First, this is a good way to cross promote your services to existing customers for both business. Chances are 1 client may avail your carpet + house cleaning services.

    Unlike when you have a 2 different website, you'll need to promote them separately which might cost more in advertising.

    Second, in SEO's perspective an authority site would have a higher weight when it comes to ranking than a small niche site.
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    • Profile picture of the author uktrader
      They seem close enough, so I'd say 1 website.

      I would try to come up with a brand for your entire cleaning business. Like [someword].com or [someword]cleaning.com
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      • Profile picture of the author infamous dave
        Originally Posted by uktrader View Post


        I would try to come up with a brand for your entire cleaning business. Like [someword].com or [someword]cleaning.com
        I would be interested to hear your explanation on this because I tend to disagree. I believe for branding purposes it is much better to brand each service individually because target markets are similar but not the same for each service and definitely the USP is different for each service.

        For example, we currently offer House Cleaning, Carpet Cleaning and Commercial Office Cleaning. House cleaning and carpet cleaning clients are very similar but the target market for office cleaning is very different. Also the USP for house cleaning is the fact that we give you time to spend with your family instead of cleaning your house, the USP of the carpet cleaning service is the fact that our method leaves your carpet almost dry when we are finished, etc.
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  • Profile picture of the author SEO-Dave
    It's a good question.

    Ignoring branding and only covering SEO it's easier to rank one website compared to ranking two. When you have a domain you've worked on backlinks for years Google 'trusts' what's on the domain a lot more than the same content on a new domain with the exact same backlinks.

    Comparatively speaking adding one webpage to your existing domain about your partners business is going to rank higher/faster than the exact same content with the same backlinks on a new domain.

    I own over 100 domains, if it made sense organisation wise etc... I'd have all the content on one domain, as a whole it would generate a lot more traffic than the entire network does right now.

    Consider I'm talking pure SEO here, one domain takes less SEO work (less backlinks) than multiple domains. There are of course other considerations, which might make multiple domains a better choice, but pure SEO wise one is best.

    David
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    Freelance SEO Consultant
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  • Profile picture of the author PBScott
    I would go with one main website, as mentioned above you could cross promote your services to customers you have already gained, and you would be building real word authority in your services.

    From an SEO standpoint. I am 95%+ sure that one giant website would outrank a bunch of smaller ones overall, just put that same effort into the one website that was going to be needed to create and promote the many.

    Spending multiplied efforts on the design as well would help with the ever important conversion rate.
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  • Profile picture of the author premz
    many people thinkl that more website more money and then thier end up by doing nothing.... better try to focus only on 1 website... do search engine optimization properly and boom thier ur site .
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  • Profile picture of the author Hemanth Malli
    Its good to have one Website for all services.
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    Inverselogix
    CEO
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  • Profile picture of the author Slade556
    House cleaning and carpet cleaning are pretty much related, so you can opt for one website only (which you already have).
    It's also a lot easier to manage just one website, especially since yours is already getting traffic and potential clients.
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  • Profile picture of the author SEWARRIOR
    If your present site is old one and have good backlink better create a subcatergory for house cleaning in it and add more page and articles to it.

    Single site is good unless you operate from 2 different location.
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  • Profile picture of the author joshyadams
    Definitely under one roof - much easier and relevant enough!
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  • Profile picture of the author HuiBang
    Its better to have one website for all services instead of creating multiple ones because it take time and cost to rank all website.
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  • Profile picture of the author infamous dave
    OK, here is how it will lay out. We have one parent company that is called "B******** P****** Services" So there will be a main domain name of that business name.com but that will just be a holding company and will be unbranded. There will also be at least 3 other domains that will point to b*******P******.com. One of the domains pointing to it will be the domain that I am currently using for my carpet cleaning website.

    Does this sound like it will work? Will I lose all of the rankings I currently have on my carpet cleaning website?
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    Originally Posted by infamous dave View Post

    Right now my wife has a housecleaning business she has operated for 10 years and I operate a carpet cleaning business. We are planning to open and operate several other service businesses in the next few years. I find it beneficial to keep each branded business separated and uniquely branded but we will be setting up 1 LLC to house all the other businesses under as we grow.

    Right now I have a website for my carpet cleaning business but my wife never wanted a website for her housecleaning business because she keeps a full schedule all the time with just word of mouth. We are now in the process of hiring employees and growing our businesses beyond owner/operator status so we want a web presence for each of our services.

    My question is, should I keep separate websites for each individual brand or combine them all into one larger, hopefully more authoritative website? Right now landing pages for service + city seem to bring in the most traffic by far to my carpet cleaning site so I would think that if I just combined all the services to one site and have all of the different business domain names point to that site?

    Anyone have any good advice or comments to offer? TIA.
    It all depends...

    Sure carpet cleaning & house cleaning are similar niches but what happens with your future businesses? Example, snow removal, landscaping, pet sitting, etc... doesn't really go with house/carpet cleaning. You didn't say what the BIG picture was so all we can do is guess.
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