Are you ever handicapping yourself in search by using a subfolder over a new domain/website?
-
Hello Moz Community!
We are building a separate hospital related to a single service line that is currently part of our main website. Traditionally all our hospitals are folded into one website with the same brand.
Problem: Our organization's leaders want to market the new hospital as "Brand Name X" nationally, and not use our locally strong brand name at all.
Therefore is the smarter long-term decision to begin building content on a new website with the new "Brand name X" even though it will take longer and be harder, than building it on our big, established website with a 60+ DA site?
What I fear is our current website's DA won't matter much if people nationally are using Brand X, which isn't part of our traditional brand name? And they won't be using the traditional brand name at all.
Example Scenario: We create a new hospital just focused on heart-related issues.
Do we move the bulk of information for this new hospital from http://www.nebraskamed.com/heart, to a new website that will better rank with the new brand X and for just heart-related keywords?
Or is it still better to try and stick with the same domain in a subfolder?
-
Hi Patrick, I hate to be the dissenting opinion here, but I think it would be best to use a subdomain or something connected to the main brand domain.
For example, I feel heart.nebraskamed.com (or even building up nebraskamed.com/heart, but giving it a distinct brand and look) would get off to a better start by leveraging the existing DA, while also being separate enough to have an associated brand. Branding is super tricky, but I know it's also a marathon to launch a new website from scratch and compete for new business. Is there a lot of cardiology competition? Are you trying to compete locally or regionally, or both? Plus, wouldn't you want to leverage the strength of the local brand, for something as serious as cardiology where the best-of-the-best expertise is sought?
Just a few thoughts. Of course if your organizational compass points to a completely separate domain, I would establish a linking strategy and go from there.
Best of luck!
Kristine
-
Thanks Ryan, Josh and Dmitrii,
You all brought up good points for me to consider. Thanks.
Patrick
-
Hey Patrick,
I lean toward Dmitrii's response as well. With a new domain you don't have to try to work in the new branding into your existing brand at all. Many times the attempt to make a new entity work within an existing one fails because of confusion. The clearer you can make something to a unfamiliar visitor, the better and can very likely turn into some indirect SEO benefits.
Additionally, I'm sure there is a way you can utilize the power of your existing authoritative website and build up a secondary domain. For example: if the secondary product is all about heart-related issues, could you link to this entity from a hear-related page on the primary website? A link from a health-related website on a heart-related page to a heart-related website seems pretty relevant to a visitor and can pass some great juice.
I'm also on the same page with Josh regarding cost. If the budget really doesn't support the above efforts, then the route of a sub folder being the primary landing of this product is a great option. If budget isn't the primary concern, I'd think the second entity is much better for the long-term health.
Best of luck, Ryan
-
Thanks for the quick and useful feedback Dmitrii. We're leaning toward what you're saying, but just want to make sure others feel the same way.
-
Hi there.
Yes, I'd recommend to create new domain with new website, new brand name and content. Since you guys want to market it on it's own, it's going to be separate entity, so separate website/domain is needed. Yes, it's going to be more work in the beginning, but much less work than moving and rebranding (or "disonnecting" brands) in future. Additionally, there won't be any user-related confusion, which can happen if you put new brand on existing brand's website.
Cheers.
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
-
Two companies merging into a new website. How to merge two existing websites into a brand new website and preserve search rankings.
Brand A and Brand B are merging to form Brand C. Brand A has a great search presence (prominent rankings, answer boxes, and impressive organic traffic). Brand B has a good reputation in real life but their web presence was extremely weak (we've been helping with that over the past few months and it is improving). What are the steps we need to take? The previous domains from Brand A and Brand B are going away and we need to promote the newly minted Brand C website. This Q/A summarizes what we want to do but with one exception: They only discuss merging Brand A into BRand B and there is no Brand C.
Branding | | CommandPartners0 -
International SEO - Domains or Folders?
Hi, We have been approached by a potential client. They are a UK company whose website is hosted on a .com domain (the .co.uk forwards to the .com). They also have a German website hosted on a .de domain. Both the .com and the .de are hosted in the UK. We believe that the .de website should be hosted in Germany. You agree? Anyway, they now need to target the US market. They are planning on duplicating the UK (.com) website and creating a US version of the site on a .us domain. They would rewrite the content for the US site to avoid duplications, and add Href Lang attributes etc. They are also debating whether the new US site should be hosted in the US or the UK. We don't think this is the best strategy. Would it not be better to host both the UK and US website on the .com domain. using reginal folders? i.e. example.com/uk, and example.com/us. Obviously we would setup Href Lang accordingly and change the Google Search Console geo targeting options for each of the sub-sites (/uk and /us). Or we could suggest hosting the UK site on the .co.uk domain, and the US on the .com domain. So, what is the best strategy to target the US audience, whilst maintaining UK rankings? Many thanks for your time, hope to hear from you soon 🙂 Lee.
Branding | | Webpresence1 -
New domain for new branding
We are considering taking a redirect off and have our 20 yr old website go to our new name/brand 1yr old website. (junonia.com to junoactive.com) is there a checklist or template to follow when doing this? I need to get this completed with as little ramifications as possible. Help!? I did see the whiteboard friday concerning this and was hoping there was some more info or advice I could get to prepare everyone for what would happen and make sure I am getting it done right.
Branding | | MarketPlanB0 -
I have a company with multiple locations through out the US and I am trying to figure out the best way to use Google+ and Facebook.
Should I create separate pages for each location or should I create one account and add all my locations to that account?
Branding | | steve2150 -
Will you show a case study/live analytics of Moz before and after name change?
so many people are interested these days in changing domains either for branding purposes like you did or some people believe that having an exact match domain will save the day. I believe posting any knowledge you have gained through your fantastic looking analytics system could shed light on a subject so many people seem to be asking about. Some things I would love to know regarding the amount of people that you have either gained or lost through organic search along with your ranking for the term "seo" And other things you guys must be learning along the way as well. I would also like to know your opinion of having a meter of some sort tell us just how many new people type in Moz vs seomoz I tink it would be a great topic for people to learn about branding from as well as a way to show off your new analytics. Fellow Mozers to you agree or not? ( I now see all the little tricks you guys have been putting in our head by never using seo in branding for a long time aside from of course your name) Great job on the transition. Sincerely, Thomas PS. Did Roger get a new coat of paint or did you just take him to the car wash?
Branding | | BlueprintMarketing0 -
Social boxes on website - facebook comments feature
Hi everyone, does anyone know where i can install a comments box which when people see a post of page they can add a comment - which also goes to facebook? however i would like to preapprove this? I have seen this kind of thing on websites and wondered how it is done? im assuming it can help obtain more social noise? Any help much appreciated.
Branding | | pauledwards0 -
Should your company's name be in the title tag of your website?
First of all, I would like to provide some background information. Our company is small. We are just now getting into SEO research and have been improving over a couple months of research. We are somewhere in the 500,000's in the world rankings. From what I understand, the title tag provides a great amount of weight to whatever keywords you set up. The words in the title tag are supposed to represent keywords that you want to be high in the search engines for, correct? Well, in our title tag, we have the name of our company. To me, this is a waste of space. No one is going to go to Google and search for our company's name because we are not that widely known. Looking back at our search history for customers, there has not been a single search for the company name. What someone is telling me, is that when we put our link somewhere, having the name of our company in the title tag strengthens the "link juice" we get from those links. Is this correct, or is it worth trashing the company name for another keyword to optimize?
Branding | | FrontlineMobility0 -
.us domain extension for US locales
I have a large US travel site and am looking to make targeted pages for specific locations, attractions etc around the United States. With many of the TLD's already purchased for these niches, I thought about using the .us extension as it seemed relevant to the topics. Does this hurt seo possibilities or does the .us extension come across as spammy?
Branding | | Millibit2