One company, two audiences. Ok to make two sites?
-
I have researched and researched on this question, and I'm still not satisfied. Most of the answers on the Moz forum and otherwise are all from 2013, as well. So, I thought I'd bring it up again.
I have two distinct audiences for a real estate business I'm working with (very different needs and interests):
- Farm Buyers
- Residential Buyers
My client is wanting to expand their presence in the farm market. Their main competitor is ranking for, more or less, an exact domain name match. They want to spin up a site focused only on farm buyers. Here are the pros/cons in my mind of creating a separate site:
- Pros: Reaching/targeting a specific audience (better user experience), having domain name with keywords (I won't keyword stuff...promise), a site completely devoted to content regarding farms, a blog completely devoted to farms (we have a content strategy in place)
- Cons: NAP issues (same address), splitting up domain authority, a bit of brand confusion (though the same logo/brand will be on both sites)
In my mind, the pros outweigh the cons. Any ideas on how to address the cons? I could just not include address and phone, but that seems ridiculous...catering to the bots and not the user.
Thanks, everyone!
Gabe -
Hey Gabe,
Great topic, and those competitors with EMDs outranking one are seriously aggravating. You've done a really good job of brainstorming the pros and cons. Pretty much 100% of the time, I advocate for a single site approach. The potential for brand building, authority building, ease of management and protection from the ever-changing whims of Google's filters make this the smart choice. Some things to ask the client, which I'm going to pretend is called R&B Realty:
-
Won't it be easier for you to build awareness of R&B serving all realty needs, than to expect consumers to somehow remember that they should go to rbfarmrealestate.com or rbhomesforsale.com? Don't you just want them to think of RBrealty.com for all of their needs?
-
Is there anything about the present domain that is ruling out building awesome farm-related content? For example is the domain something like homesforsalechicago.com right now? If so, could it be that you do need to purchase a new domain, but that it needs to be a branded domain that can encompass all present and future services? Imagine if in future R&B wants to expand to commercial real estate or luxury real estate. Would they then need 4 domains? That's a rabbit hole you don't want to go down.
-
Are you ready to invest? Provided that the current domain isn't making it somehow impossible to believe one could buy farm real estate from the company, I would present the company with a plan for creating the best possible section on the website for farm real estate. I would consistently publish best-in-class articles on this topic until I'd convinced Google that farm real estate is part-and-parcel of my brand, just as much as residential real estate is. I would be sure this content was highlighted from the homepage onward, and was built with good UX and good CTAs in mind. I'd invest a great deal in this, and make my pages rank highly for core terms. I'd also consider offsite marketing initiatives (both online and off) that would begin to build awareness of my brand's association with farm properties. I see far more opportunities than limits with this approach, and with the right plan, you should have no problem creating a sterling strategy for the client.
Hope these thoughts are helpful!
-
-
Tough question! I'll try to touch on a couple of your pros / cons.
1- A domain name rich in keywords isn't nearly as important as it used to be. If you were reading old articles (from before 2013, which those may have referenced), this might have misled you a bit.
2- Similar to less domain authority (as each will need to grow their own backlinks), each site will also have less direct traffic- which is a strong ranking factor that shouldn't be overlooked. It's VERY difficult for low-traffic sites to gain traction on competitive organic keywords.My instinct is to make a branch of the original site devoted to the other audience. Nothing precludes that portion of the site from having its own blog and being a go-to resource for that audience. When you begin ranking on the organic keywords, they should end up in that portion of the site anyway.
If you were pricing/rebranding the same products differently for another audience that may change things, but I don't think that your list of "Pros" as is outweigh the "Cons." Of course, do more research and hopefully others will chime in too. Best of luck!
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
-
Multiple keywords in one article?
Hi guys! I will be soon getting my article published in local newspaper (online edition) with DA 50. They told me i can choose whatever anchor text I want. The article is about towing business and my keyword is going to be also "towing". Is it smart to add another keyword in the same article (which is similar and is also a money keyword) ? Thanks!
Local SEO | | Suksinho0 -
Keyword and Branded Title Tags Site Wide
I have a client who is using a structure like this for site wide title tags: Page specific keyword | Brand Name | Industry specific keyword + locations So in an example it'd look like: Drupal Development | BrandName | Web Services for Los Angeles, San Fransisco, New York I've researched this structure pretty thoroughly to be able to make a case for or against doing this site wide.
Local SEO | | culturefoundry
However, I've received many mixed signals on many things. My questions are as follows: Should brand name be last in this structure? Does it matter? The length of this is obviously causing truncated Title in search results, so which is more useful? Is using a keyword intended for site ranking like "Web Services", "Digital Agency", "SEO Specialist" useful for every page to have or damaging? Is this cannibalizing that keyword? Is having multiple locations on every page title helping, hurting, or neutral It seems like all these things could go either way to me, but I don't want to tell them one way or another without having some more detailed explanations to give them. Thanks for your help!0 -
Keyword rich domain names -> Point to sales funnel sites or to landing pages on primary domain?
Hey everyone,
Local SEO | | Transpera
We have a tonne of old domains we have done nothing with. All of them are keyword-rich domains.
Things like "[City]SEOPro" or "[City]DigitalMarketing" where [city] is a city that we are already targeting services in. So all of these domains will be targeted for local cities as keywords. We have been having an internal debate about whether or not we should just host sales funnel pages on these domains, that are rich in keywords and content......... ... Or ... ... Should we point these domains to landing pages on our existing domain that are basically the same as what we would do with the sales funnel pages, but are on our primary site? (keyword rich, with good and plentiful content) Then, as a follow-up question... Should these be set as just 301 redirects on these domains to our actual primary domain so the browser sees the landing page domain instead of the actual keyword-rich domain? ( [city]seopro.com ) Thanks guys. I know for some, the response will be an obvious one. However; we have probably way over thought this and have arguments for almost every scenario. We think we have an answer but wanted to send this out to the community first. I won't post what we are thinking yet, so that the answers can remain unbiased for now and we can have a conversation without it being swayed any one way. We understand that 301 redirects would be seen as a doorway page.
We are also only discussing in the context of organic search only.
If we ran the domains as their own sites, they would be about 3 pages of content only. Pretty static, but good content. Think of a PAS style sales funnel. Problem -> Acknowledgement -> Solution.0 -
Weather providers in search results - any idea how to become one?
Hi, as google are displaying more and more weather forecasts within results, we'd like to explore whether there's a possibility of exposing our api to google to allow them to use us as one of the providers for the data. At the moment it appears they use weather.com, weather underground and maybe also accuweather (although I've not seen them mentioned for a while on there), but I'm not sure if this is some sort of commercial agreement, or whether it's simply that google have been given access to the api's from those providers in return for the link in the weather panel in the search results. Does anyone have any information about this sort of thing (I assume weather isn't unique in this respect), or know of any way to contact google and find out at all please? Thanks
Local SEO | | PaulM01
Paul0 -
What happens with SEO when a site is served via CloudFlare CDN?
Hello, With regards to hosting, it is my understanding that one of the search engine ranking factors for a particular geographic location (city/country) is where a site is hosted physically geographically. For example, if a site was developed for New York users primarily AND it was hosted on a server physically located within New York (IP address) then it would rank better in New York ... that is, given all other SEO ranking factors were equal? Is this true? My worry is that once a site is served via CloudFlare via their 64 global cached locations, then do the search engines effectively lose all context as to its origin hosting and therefore hosting in New York (in the example above) would have no different effect than if the site was hosted on Mars (after the site had been cached, that is). Many thanks,
Local SEO | | uworlds
Mark 🙂0 -
Defining a niche for my SEO company
Hello, I realize that in order to get business in SEO, you really need to specialize. The most experience I have is with the nuts and bolts of small business E-commerce and and many types of small business web design. I've run several online stores for about 9 years and I've been doing small business web design (and a bit of development) since 2001. I've had several other SEO clients over the years. I'm in Boise, Idaho at this site What would be a profitable approach? I'm thinking I could mainly build and market small online stores for locals. Maybe something like 'Ecommerce Web Design and SEO in Boise, Idaho' for a home page title. Or I could learn Local, but I have less experience with that. Or I could try to get national clients in an even smaller niche. I'm trying to find a good approach. I only charge $75/hour and I give generous quotes when appropriate, so an 'affordable' approach would be good Thanks, Bob
Local SEO | | BobGW0 -
SEO for a web based company with no physical presence.
Hi I only have experience working in Local SEO and now Im facing the challenge of 1 clients which is based in Australia and wants to sell in Australia (protein bars) but the company doesn't have a physical presence. What do you think would be a good strategy? Do you think I still need to create NAP citations (if so that would probably benefit the SEO for one city and leave the others with less SEO influence?). Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Nico
Local SEO | | niclaus780 -
Im a big fan of niche web develop/seo companies. I was wondering how many clients can you ethically take on in the same field, located in the same city
How do niche web development companies justify having multiple clients in the same field in the same cities. I would love an explanation on how to justify this, and how many clients in the same field/same city is acceptable. A good example would be an seo company for auto dealers or hotels. Thanks
Local SEO | | aholyman0