Local Rank & Branding Confusion - HELP

[Sundance_Kidd]

I am working with a client now that has two sites that serve two segments of a particular market segment.  They have two different URLs which cater to these different target markets BUT the company is known in its local market as a their brand name (of course) which is different than their 2 domain names used on these 2 sites.  Confusing eh?  This has resulted in confusing Google and their rank has suffered a bit.

To provide more color + insight-

Let's just say this company is called AtlantaEventsInc and they offer event services for corporate events and let's say weddings.  So let's say they have had atlantaeventscorporate.com for 20 years and then they add atlantaeventweddings.com about a year ago since their wedding business is expanding.  So they promote their corporate events on one site and their wedding events on another.  These 2 sites also currently share one blog, share one Facebook page, one Twitter and have two Google+ pages.

Should we keep these two sites totally separate? and even have separate blogs and separate social media accounts? OR since our rank has only suffered with the new wedding site (just a year old) should we retire that site? (i suppose we could still keep separate blogs though for each target market.

WOULD LOVE INSIGHT ON THIS!  Thanks,

Chris

[sparkeeey]

If you merge the two sites say into atlantaeventscorporate.com and 301 all of atlantaeventweddings.com content to its new location at atlantaeventscorporate.com you will effectively be combining the page ranks and traffic scores of the two. Of course its not quite that simple and there are ways this could go wrong but I would look into that. Perhaps just turn wedding into a subdomain with a directory style url?

[Sundance_Kidd]

Thanks for your insight and i agree.  So basically you are saying that since all of the rank issues commenced with the recent addition of the wedding site, just simply retire it?  also, can you provide an example of a directory style url.

thx

[JCurrier]

The confusion potentially comes from the citations associated on the various accounts. You didn't mention phone number, but I am assuming that is the same for both businesses as well.

Having two separate sites, since they are focused on different segments makes sense. However, every detail should be treated as these being separate businesses if they are going to be represented as such.

When you talk about their rankings, are you talking about website rankings or local places rankings?

What is the purpose of the wedding site? Is it a single landing page or a full-on information rich site with multiple pages?

Also, you say that they are sharing a blog, how is this set up?

[Sundance_Kidd]

Thanks for the reply and good questions.

The phone numbers are the same (street addresses different) and the wedding site is flushed out with rich info & multiple pages.  In regards to the blog, it is somewhat recent and hosted on the wedding site and mainly focused on weddings.  Currently implementing a blog for the other site (corporate one) which used to link directly to the wedding site's blog.   Basically the blog link in the menu bar on the homepage of the corp site links directly to the wedding site's blog.

In regards to the site's rankings-  The wedding site actually ranks very well considering its just shy of a year old (for wedding words) and lot of this is due to lots of fresh content.  The corporate site is very static on the other hand but the corporate site has the advantage of being around for many years.  The odd thing in regards to the local places rankings is that when users type in a query for say "wedding planner atlanta", their wedding site appears on page #1 but their corporate site actually appears in the local map results.

thanks,

Chris

[photoseo1]

I have been doing weddings and photography for years and understand just where you are at. I started out in photography then expanded to wedding planning. From being successful with Google keeping the #1 spots for my desired keywords even today, this is what I do.

I have a different website for each thing that I offer. Photography=website + blog. Wedding planning= website+blog. Weddings and photography go hand and hand, yes, but you won't be able to compete on both fronts for keywords unless you separate them out, as google just won't let you take down that many keywords with just one site like they used to. You aren't going to rank for weddings and event planning on the same site unless it is a long-tailed keyword like "wedding event planning". Also, you don't want to dilute your event planning site with weddings, because then you are just going to rank "ok" for each and not great for either.

It is much more work to keep the sites separate, but you don't want to confuse clients or turn them away by having them think you don't offer a service they need (because of your name) when you actually do offer that service as well.   If you are confusing google, take it as a sign that you are confusing clients too, because you are. I would get another phone # for the other business and use unit #A  & Unit B to denote a difference in address.

I also understand the subdomain idea, but it then causes the blog overlap which you don't want.

We just keep our sites separate. Then in blog posts credit the other site or blog as if it was a separate company that was the contractor you used for the event.

We have had excellent luck with this as it happened out of necessity and it seems nearly identical to your current scenario.

Good luck.

[Sundance_Kidd]

Thanks Steven! Curious, do you have separate addresses for each as well as phone #'s?  and what about social media?

THanks!

Chris

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Christian,

You're receiving some great feedback here. I'll add my 2 cents.

• If the businesses are operating out of the same physical location and share a phone number, than presenting this as a single business would be most appropriate. Once you've merged all of the content onto a single URL, do citation cleanup to be sure that your name, address, phone and website are all consistent across all mentions on the web.

• The alternative is to get completely separate addresses and phone numbers for each business and run them without any connection between the two. Whether you go this route depends on whether you feel the market warrants it. Just remember, if you this way, there must be nothing shared between the 2 businesses - not contact data, content, links, etc. And, you'll want to be building out two totally separate sets of citations for each business, being sure the data isn't mixed up anywhere.

Hope this helps!

[Sundance_Kidd]

Thank you very much!  Is sharing a Facebook account ok?

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Christian,

If you're going with separate branding  - no. Absolutely every asset must be separate to avoid confusion. You must approach this as two unrelated companies if you choose to run two companies instead of one.

[photoseo1]

Christian,

I have separate phone #'s for local search purposes, but use a different unit #'s, but the same address.

I also definitely have separate social media accounts for each. You don't want to run into a situation where you do 10 events or 10 weddings in a row that you post on social media or your blog, because you will shun one side of your audience (wedding clients don't want to see only big event examples, if they really want to see weddings examples and vice-versa). One account for each business division.

[sparkeeey]

If you are still wondering about the directory url:

atlantaeventscorporate.com/weddings

to do this you could:

1. Create a subdomain.
   Forward atlantaeventweddings.com to the subdomain
     Use htaccess rewrite to direct incoming traffic to atlantaeventcorporate.com/weddings/
     or
     Redirect weddings.atlantaeventcorporate.com to atlantaeventcorporate.com/weddings/
2. Don't create a subdomain:
   Just create the weddings folder in the root of your domain and build from there.
   and then forward atlantaeventweddings.com to atlantaeventcorporate.com/weddings/