I continue updating you on SEO case studies here to promote idea sharing with our readers. HighRankings forums recently discussed an SEO case when a person had to optimize for 50 states and reviewed potential pros and cons of the following possible steps to take:
- creating separate 50 domains;
- creating separate 50 subdomains;
- creating 50 pages each optimized for a separate state.
In any case, that’s a hard case. Whatever technique may be chosen, plenty of challenges open up:
- Separate domains: apart from a real headache to maintain, this approach would be unbelievably expensive and take too much time. Managing 50 domains, hosting them, building links without being suspected of spamming the index will be too hard to make sense. Sure, with time and money at hand this method would be the most effective, I guess: promoting each separate site locally would be a win-win when done right.
- 50 subdomains would be not much easier to manage and promote than in the above case plus you have more chances to be penalized for spamming the index.
- Optimizing 50 pages internally would be the option I’d probably go with – to me it looks the wisest thing to do (not in each case, of course). First, it is easier and faster and looks natural; besides, you can get full advantage of internal anchor text (with the above two methods interlinking wouldn’t be possible in order not to create a “malicious” network). Surely, I see a few serious disadvantages with this method as well: with so many keywords to target, you should avoid over-optimization of internal anchor text that can get you penalized. Besides, not every company (take e-Commerce site for example) can afford so much focus on locally targeted pages.
I don’t understand how having 50 subdomains would get penalized for spamming. Please elaborate.
I would go with 1 site and different sub directories, This would be helpful for me to build links(Instead of building links to 50 sites) and i can show a big site to search engines. (If i have all 50 states in one single site, i would have more pages and internal link structure would also be pretty good).
50 separate URL’s – Insane
50 sub-domains – No Point
1 Site | Internal Pages = Logical – If you can avoid duplicate content, which might prove to be a lot of SEO copy writing. Because just changing the state, county or city isn’t going to cut it.
Depending on what your top-level keyword and category is, having one domain could be very useful in terms of having a high ranking for the main page.
If you had many incoming links to the various sub-pages pages (i.e. “deep links) you could create situation where the main page is also seen as important and gets a high ranking.
I completely agree with your approach. One of my clients has 100+ bricks and mortar locations and we have chosen option #3: separate pages for each store. Unfortunately due to current resource constraints they are template-driven pages with nothing unique except the address, etc.
We went with this approach because it seems to be the most scalable in terms of 1) updating content on individual pages, and 2) adding new locations as they open.
So far results are positive, but some upcoming content creation and geo-targeting efforts will likely give us the boost we need to pull in traffic for non-branded terms.
I would like to see this topic explored some more. It’s a challenge to make all the separate pages but still have some sort of unique content.
Hi Ann,
Interesting post. I wonder if the preferred option would be different if, instead of 50 states, we were discussing 5 (english speaking) countries currently on a single domain?
Cheers, AL.
We currently use the pages approach and are very happy with it. I dont see the purpose of using subdomains here as the website theme is staying the same.
Hi AL,
If targeting five different countries, I would go with separate domains. This would also allow hosting each domain in the targeted country in order to show up in Google’s search for only sites that are located in the specific country.
@Frank -Do u feel Listing under “only sites that are located in the specific country” will yield more traffic? I think more people would search under the web option rather than only from Australian or only from UK!
Mercy,
You’re right that most people are searching using the default web option rather than UK only, but if you generate different domains, you might as well host them locally not to exclude any searches. (For some pages, I am involved in I see up to 5% of the visitors using the local options).
I was too brief in my comment, since there is another benefit from local hosting. It is also reported to influence ranking. ie. Australian hosting should benefit rankings in search results from Australian IP’s.
(I haven’t tested this myself, but I have read the statement repeatedly from well-reputed SEO people).
@ScotchAL : for 5 English speaking countries I’d definitely go with 5 separate domain with country-specific TLDs and local hosting.
Surely Option 3 is the way to go….
I am assuming that the company is selling the same service/product in different areas..
Easier to manage,
Faster to market
Quicker ROI
As someone who’s done a lot of hotel SEO and booked some hotel rooms myself, I can tell you that the major chains run stuff through a single site and geotarget individual pages. Hilton, for instance. I think Starwood do too, if memory serves.
instead of putting so much time into SEO and making stuff you dont even know the result – just buy the god damn traffic.
…and get RICH BIATCH!
;)
Yup, I use the geo targeted pages approach as well. Add it up into a directory structure and ranking becomes easier. It’s a lot easier in Canada than the states because we don’t have to deal with 50+ states ;).
That said I lay it out in the format: domain.com/province/keyword+region.file-extension i.e domain.com/ontario/car-rental-toronto.html. The on page content includes local seo best practises such as maps, addresses, local phone numbers etc.
Hi ann, I have read loads of your articles lately, keep em coming :) “creating 50 pages each optimized for a separate state” – How could this be done without having duplicate content issues? I am just about to do SEO for a site that needs to target about 10 local prominent locations and was thinking of creating a page for each location with the area changed in page content and meta tags ect. but was wondering about the duplicate content issues (ie. if a page has say 300 words with 20 being the location and only the 20 location words were changed). Any ideas would be appreciated.
I would use 50 different pages but I would also put them in sub directories.
By putting each Geographical Region in a different sub directory you can set the Geographical location in Google Webmaster Tools for each sub directory.
This way you get to optimise for the 50 different states and have them all show up in relevant local searches for that region.
@Chester SEO : My take is that you need to create unique content for each page – I guess having only 10 locations to target that’s not too challenging.
To tell the Search Engines the ‘country’ your website is most relavent to
a) Have a top-level domain (TLD) for the country like .co.uk
b) Get the tld/ site hosted/ on a nameserver in the targeted country
Also, it would be the possible gain in load time, since it may take less hops (An intermediate connection in a string of connections linking two network devices.) for the browser to get the content.
Ann, unique content it will be then, your right only 10 locations wont be a struggle, thanks for replying :)
I am interested in learnign more about the over optimization techniques to be avoided. What is the limit if internal page linkings
The country a site is hosted now seems to be the most important factor to Google. Domain extentsions are irrelevant
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