[Rock Headed]

Trying to SEO when you have two service locations....and you are a one man show.

So. I recently moved up to the mountains. My old market was very different being right outside of philly. I'm in a smaller, slower, cheaper, less competitive market. very few people up here can afford or have any want for the sort of high-end work that I've been doing. No market here? well, I'll have to create the market--but that's another topic.

My plan moving up here was and is, to live a couple hours north of the city, setting up camp a few times a year in my old area, to perform a few high-end jobs. I explained the situation to my client base in a recent blog post....http://www.devineescapes.com/uncategorized/in_two_places_devine_escapes


Anyway, i'm concerned about google getting confused and it hurting my rankings--there are sites out there with my old adress connected to my current phone number and business name, and there are sites that have the new address.


But wait a minute--this should not be a huge problem, big companies have multiple addresses all the time. So now what I am thinking is that Devine Escapes should have two locations. Set up a phone number for the south east pennsylvania address, bada bing, right?

What I have right now is a website semi-optimized for north east pa and semi-optimized for south east pa.....I'm starting to think i need two websites as well as two address and phone numbers.

Alright fellas, what do you think?

 

[cbscreative]

I vote for two web sites.

 

[Rock Headed]

Two company names then....?

Devine Escapes Philly and Devine Escapes Poconos?

 

[JBM]

Make a new website and 301 the old one to it. You will get the domain authoirty passed to the new one.

Im not sure if I heard somewhere that you have to 301 to inner pages to pass the juice, just check on that before you 301 it to your home page.

Or you could put up a "we have moved to xyz and in 5 seconds you will be redirected", then once you are established at your new URL then you can do the 301 to pass the juice.

I would hire a web guy to make sure its done right.

 

[aaron22]

Yes, you could do it either way. The most important thing is to have two separate phone numbers and addresses - but two separate websites isn't necessary. I would probably just stick with one website myself because it's easier to build authority. You'll just want to do separate Google places profiles for each location and do citation building for each location as well. It would also be a good idea to create a location-specific page that is optimized for each location.

If you were in two super competitive markets, than my advice may be different. However, since one of your markets is almost non-existent, I think it'd be too much work doing two separate websites. Also, if you DO decided to do 2 websites, make sure that the content is different on each. You'll get penalized if you copy and paste content from one to the other.

 

[nhsu11]

I think it's better to have one web site. Since it's the same business, just a different location, you would have a lot of duplicate content. This will hurt your SEO. You will also have to spend time managing content for two different web sites if you want to show significantly different content.

I looked at the web sites of some bigger companies with multiple locations, and it looks like they just have a 'locations' section to list their multiple locations.

I noticed your web site makes many references to Mongtomery County. Are your new service areas in the same county?

 

[Rock Headed]

I noticed your web site makes many references to Mongtomery County. Are your new service areas in the same county?

Montgomery is where I moved from That's where all the hustle and bustle is.

Hour and a half north (Monroe county) in the rugged terrain is where I lay my hat now.


Thanks for the replies...keep em coming. I'm starting to get my brain wrapped around the issue.

 

[jamestrd]

Trying to SEO when you have two service locations....and you are a one man show.

So. I recently moved up to the mountains. My old market was very different being right outside of philly. I'm in a smaller, slower, cheaper, less competitive market. very few people up here can afford or have any want for the sort of high-end work that I've been doing. No market here? well, I'll have to create the market--but that's another topic.

My plan moving up here was and is, to live a couple hours north of the city, setting up camp a few times a year in my old area, to perform a few high-end jobs. I explained the situation to my client base in a recent blog post....http://www.devineescapes.com/uncategorized/in_two_places_devine_escapes


Anyway, i'm concerned about google getting confused and it hurting my rankings--there are sites out there with my old adress connected to my current phone number and business name, and there are sites that have the new address.


But wait a minute--this should not be a huge problem, big companies have multiple addresses all the time. So now what I am thinking is that Devine Escapes should have two locations. Set up a phone number for the south east pennsylvania address, bada bing, right?

What I have right now is a website semi-optimized for north east pa and semi-optimized for south east pa.....I'm starting to think i need two websites as well as two address and phone numbers.

Alright fellas, what do you think?

try this.

www.rockheadphilymakingmoney.com and www.rockheaddumb**** losingmoneyinthehulls.com

 

[mudpad]

They are making great advances in cloning these days, in case you need two of you. :laughing:

 

[Calidecks]

I would be a very rich man if I had another one of me.

 

[getprosonline]

Re: So Now I Am In Two Places At Once

There's no need to go through all the work of creating a new site, company name, etc - stick to one and its way easier and just as effective.

Update your service areas page to list both locations, each having their own service areas. Add the schema.org HTML markup for multiple addresses for your HomeAndConstruction business to tell the search engines you exist in two locations. Creating a Google Places profile for both business locations is another must do.

 

[cbscreative]

I'm seeing a deeper issue here and my vote for two sites probably should have been elaborated on earlier but time was in short supply. There was a statement above about mostly duplicate content. My thoughts the entire time were the exact opposite.

You have two radically different markets. Trying to reach both with the same pages will reach neither as effectively. Your Home page for Philly and the Home page for the hills need to be entirely different. Each site needs to be specific to your goals and target market. A dual focus just waters it down for both markets. I would even say it goes so far as to send mixed messages.

The high end work in Philly will have your hills customer thinking, "This is fancier than I was wantin'. I reckon all look fer some good ol boy that kin do the job." And your Philly customer may think, "Looks like this company may show up with Granny's rockin' chair in the back of the truck."