How best to use multiple domains?

[M_Lyons10]

Hi everyone. I have a main domain for out business and got some service and location specific domains. So I was wondering what the best way to handle these would be considering good SEO and such. The domains are structured like this:

[city][service].com.

So, should I just redirect all of these to our main site, or will that not give us the biggest bang for our buck? I wasn't sure if these sites should all have a landing page or something that then allows someone to click through to our main site, or if a simple redirect will get the job done as well. The hope is that these domains will show as more relevant in the search results as a search for a particular service near their city should return one of these websites...

Any help and information is greatly appreciated.

Thanks Again,

-Matt-

[tim_s]

Hi,

[city].[domain].[tld] will create separate identities in terms of SEO

[www].[domain].[tld]/[city]/ will strengthen the one domains identity in terms of SEO

For me I try and keep it simple - IF the `subject` of the sub-domains is the same as the main domain, I would create landing pages, else IF the `subject` is different I.e. is not the main focus of the main domain I would use sub-domains.

It is really hard to work this out without knowing about the core of the business and what the separation of domains is suppose to achieve.

[primexx]

unless you're actually serving different content on different domains, just 301 redirect all the secondary ones to the main domain. having duplicate content hurts your rankings and landing pages are annoying and pointless.

[M_Lyons10]

Hi,

[city].[domain].[tld] will create separate identities in terms of SEO

[www].[domain].[tld]/[city]/ will strengthen the one domains identity in terms of SEO

For me I try and keep it simple - IF the `subject` of the sub-domains is the same as the main domain, I would create landing pages, else IF the `subject` is different I.e. is not the main focus of the main domain I would use sub-domains.

It is really hard to work this out without knowing about the core of the business and what the separation of domains is suppose to achieve.

Well, to explain further, say I have a city that we service named Scranton and we provide Mold Remediation services, we have a domain called ScrantonMold.com. So, if someone types "Scranton Mold" in the search engine, we should be pretty far up in those rankings I would hope.

I just want to make sure that we get the biggest bang for our buck here.

And I see what you mean with your second suggestion of creating pages for each city, but I'm not sure what specifically I would put there as the site already makes clear that we service that area.

unless you're actually serving different content on different domains, just 301 redirect all the secondary ones to the main domain. having duplicate content hurts your rankings and landing pages are annoying and pointless.

That's what I was thinking as well. I HATE landing pages, but am hoping that this will cause the sites to show higher in the rankings for these particular location / service searches... And I do understand the usefulness of landing pages in some circumstances. I just don't want to do the wrong thing...

But I wasn't sure what the ramifications of this would be in the end. I assume that the location specific domains will be the ones that show higher in the rankings, but will the directs to the main site cause that to improve it's ranking as well? Will this hurt the main site's ranking at all?

Thanks Again,

-Matt-

[tim_s]

Each page be-it landing or domain would need to have specific content related to the city. On some level duplication will not degrade your SEO ranking but the more variances the better. I would keep it simple and expand, get a college student in England the task of discussing city pride and about your services, while keeping the main site national.

[primexx]

Each page be-it landing or domain would need to have specific content related to the city. On some level duplication will not degrade your SEO ranking but the more variances the better. I would keep it simple and expand, get a college student in England the task of discussing city pride and about your services, while keeping the main site national.

yup. you can actually make localized sites on those domains, which'll help put the localized domains on top of the rankings. but if you don't actually localize the content and just 301 redirect all the local domains to the main one, then the main one should be the one that shows up on searches.

[M_Lyons10]

Thank you everyone again for the help. I was thinking about this this weekend, and was actually wondering if it makes more sense to redirect these sites to a page on my site specific to that particular service rather than the main page...? How would that impact the SEO? Will this improve the ranking of the main site, or help the other sites better?

yup. you can actually make localized sites on those domains, which'll help put the localized domains on top of the rankings. but if you don't actually localize the content and just 301 redirect all the local domains to the main one, then the main one should be the one that shows up on searches.

Alright, I see. So, will the redirect help the SEO rankings of the main site or have no real impact? I don't want to do anything that may negatively impact our rankings either.

Thanks Again everyone for your input and help.

-Matt-

[M_Lyons10]

Also, I was just thinking about this, and I was wondering if anyone knows a way that I can see analytics for what domain they were going to when it is a redirect... I use Google Analytics now, but I don't see a way to see what domain they were going to. I can see referral traffic, but only if it's a referral from another site, not a redirect.

Any help with that is greatly appreciated.

Thanks Again,

-Matt-