Subdomain question for law firm in Indiana, Michigan, and New Mexico.
-
Hi Gang,
Our law firm has offices in the states of Indiana, Michigan, and New Mexico. Each state is governed by unique laws, and each state has its own "flavor," etc.
We currently are set up with the main site as:
http://www.2keller.com (Indiana)
Subdomains as:
http://michigan.2keller.com (Michigan)
http://newmexico.2keller.com (New Mexico)
My client questions this strategy from time to time, and I want to see if anyone can offer some reassurance of which I haven't thought.
Our reason for setting up the sites in this manner is to ensure that each site speaks to state-specific practice areas (for instance, New Mexico does nursing home abuse, whereas the other states don't, etc.) and state-specific ethics law (for instance, in some states you can advertise your dollar amount recoveries, and others you can't.) There are so many differences between each state that the content would seem to warrant it.
Local citations and listings are another reason these sites are set up in such a fashion. The firm is a member of several local state directories and memberships, and by having these links go directly to the subdomain they reference, I can see this being another advantage.
Also, inside each state there are separate pages set up for specific cities. We geo-target major cities in each state, and trying to do all of this under one domain for 3 different states would seemingly get very confusing, very quickly.
I had thought of setting up the various state pages through folders on the main domain, but again, there is too much state specific info to make this seem like a logical approach. Granted the linking and content creation would be easier for one site, but I don't think we can accomplish this in a clean way with the offices being in such different locales?
I guess I'm wondering if there are some things I'm overlooking here?
Thanks guys/gals!
-
Crazy, I have quite a bit of experience with this exact scenario: law firms using geo subdomains to target specific areas.
Here's my findings and suggestions based on actual results and experience:- SEO on domain.com benefits atlanta.domain.com. This is a fact. If Starbucks decided to create subdomains tomorrow for every location, their subdomains would benefit from 91 DA. That's how Findlaw, lawyers.com and all those guys get first page placement with high DA and low PA.
- Digital Diameter is right, subdomains are more effective and directories are more efficient. UNLESS you have a really good multi-site CMS. Then you can be equally efficient and more effective.
I hope this answers your question, if you want some help or have any other questions, PM me.
-
Much appreciated... Can you see the reply above I sent to Mike and offer your thoughts?
-
Thanks, Mike. I agree with your reply, but I suppose my main concern is more associated with whether or not our site becomes too convoluted as we begin geo-targeting states and the major cities within them. It would seem to be an organizational nightmare, making sure that users are getting the experience they expect when visiting the site. Users in New Mexico don't care about Indiana law, copy, and vice-versa. There are so many topics related to specific states, and there's so much content, I worry about it becomes haphazzrd when restricted to one domain. Thoughts?
-
Subdomains (more effective):
In short the benefit is that Google will see each subdomain as a locally focused, independent site.
However, this is also the disadvantage of subdomains.
While they are more likely to be seen as locally focused, each subdomain will have to be managed, provided with unique content and links so it can quickly become much more effort.
Folders (more efficient):
Folders offer much more synergy as they are seen as a single site, but they are also seen as less local / independently targets than subdomains.
-
Randal,
I think in this instance first and foremost lets talk about url structure.From an organic search perspective structuring urls in this way (http://michigan.2keller.com) will hinder any positive seo you do on your main url. Google would view your current url structure as individual domains, therefore none of the seo strategy done on 2keller.com will transfer to the other domains.How the url is structured should not have any affect on how your add the content. We deal with national clients with multiple locations all the time. How you want to structure this is http://www.2keller.com/Michigan or http://www.2keller.com/newmexico. This would allow your team to only have to do search marketing work once and would add efficiency's to your work flow.
I know your main concern is the amount of state specific content. You can still create the pages the exact same way as before from a content perspective. Just have a solid internal linking structure on 2keller.com guiding people to the proper relevant pages or you could use geo targeting allowing the site to recognize IP address and auto-direct people to the right area. Hope this helps. Let us know if you have any questions.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
General SSL Questions After Move
Hello, We have moved our site to https, Google Analytics seems to be tracking correctly. However, I have seen some conflicting information, should I create a new view in analytics? Additionally, should I also create a new https property in Google search console and set it as the preferred domain? If so, should I keep the old sitemap for my http property while updating the sitemap to https only for the https property? Thirdly, should I create a new property as well as new sitemaps in Bing webmaster? Finally, after doing a crawl on our http domain which has a 301 to https, the crawl stopped after the redirect, is this a result of using a free crawling tool or will bots not be able to crawl my site after this redirect? Thanks for all the help in advance, I know there are a lot of questions here.
Technical SEO | | Tom3_150 -
Some questions about URL structure and multi country website
Gajanand angela dayHi,
Technical SEO | | Shahjahaaan
I have a question from SEO experts and web developers.
I want to setup a job website for 5 countries. for each country i will provide daily jobs listing on the basis of
1. jobs by categories - for example : accounting jobs. IT jobs, Sales jobs
2. jobs by city - for example : jobs in boston, jobs in chicago
3. jobs by companies for example : jobs in facebook, jobs in emirates case :
a company name " emirates " located in "boston" having vacancy of "accounting job " having position of full time this case job will be present in following categories . 1. accounting jobs in boston
2. jobs in boston
3. jobs in emirates and open any above option there will be filter box on left side showing
position i.e full time
salary i.e 1000-1500
location i.e boston,chicago Q.1
i want to know when user search on google these terms "accounting jobs in boston " or "jobs in boston" or "jobs in emirates" same job will display which url structure is recommended in for each search term? Q.2 how we can do on page SEO for these terms because jobs listing will be changing daily because of new jobs addition and content is changing not Q.3 should i create website on separate domains for each country or same domain but with different folders in it
.co.uk or com/uk for UK and .ae OR .com/uae for UAE Note : i will also attach blog on it and each blog will focus on specific country knowledge for example for USA , how to find jobs in new york and for UAE how to find jobs in Dubai etc . Thanks in Advance0 -
Question on canonicals
hi community let's say i have to 2 e-commerce sites selling the same English books in different currencies - one of the site serves the UK market ( users can purchase in sterling) while another one European markets ( user can purchase in euro). Sites are identical. SEO wise, while the "European" site homepage has a good ranking across major search engines in europe, product pages do not rank very well at all. Since site is a .com too it s hard to push it in local search engines. I would like then to push one of the sites across all search engines,tackling duplicate content etc.Geotargeting would make the rest. I would like to add canonicals tag pointing at the UK version across all EU site product pages, while leaving the EU homepage rank. I have 2 doubts though: is it ok to have canonical tags pointing at an external site. is it ok to have part of a site with canonical tags, while other parts are left ranking?
Technical SEO | | Mrlocicero0 -
New URL Structure
Hi Guy's, For our webshop we're considering a new URL structure because longtail keywords to rank so well. Now we have /category (main focus keywords)
Technical SEO | | Happy-SEO
/product/the-product345897345123/ (nice to rank on, not that much volume) We have over 500 categories and every one of them is placed after our domain. Because i think it's better to work with a good structure and managed a way to make categories and sub-categories. The 500 categories may be the case why not every one of them is ranking so well, so that was also the choice of thinking about a new structure. So the new URL structure will be: /category (main focus keywords)
/category/subcat/ (also main focus keywords) Everything will be redirect (301, good way), so i think there won't be to much problems. I'm thinking about what to do with the /product/ URL. Because now it will be on the same level as the subcategories, and i'm affraid that when it's on that level, Google will give the same value to both of them. My options that i'm considering are: **Old way **
/product/the-product-345897345123/ .html (seen this on big webshops)
/product/the-product-345897345123.html/ Level deeper SKU /product/the-product/345897345123/ What would you suggest? The new structure would be 20 categories 500+ sub's devided under main categories 5000+ products Thanks!0 -
Controlling PageRank Flow Question
One of my competitors rose above me drastically, above everyone actually. His website has a sidebar on the homepage, but when you click a post it leads to a full width page of his content - with no sidebar at all. The only button on page is HOME. My site has the sidebar on all pages, meaning juice is flowing around in all directions. Would it be smarter for me to remove my sidebar as well? In theory, this would create a boost in rankings correct?
Technical SEO | | PrivatePartners0 -
Where do you go to get a question answered by seomoz?
I thought it was here before but now the seomoz folks don't seem to be responding in this forum. Is there another place to go to get seomoz to answer a question?
Technical SEO | | klkirby0 -
Robots.txt question
I want to block spiders from specific specific part of website (say abc folder). In robots.txt, i have to write - User-agent: * Disallow: /abc/ Shall i have to insert the last slash. or will this do User-agent: * Disallow: /abc
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050 -
Subdirectories vs subdomains
Hi SEO gurus 🙂 Anyone has input on what's better? blog.domain.com vs domain.com/blog store.domain.com vs domain.com/store etc I think the subdir (/xyz) will concentrate authority on the same subdomain so should be better? However sometimes it is tidier on the server to maintain online stores or blogs in a separate strucutre so subdomains work better in that sense. I just want to make sure that doesn't affect SEO? Cheers!
Technical SEO | | hectorpn0