Should I Build A Niche City Site or Link to Existing Directory?

[Jarvatar]

I have a main site for real estate that works fairly well.  There's city pages within the site.   I have been able to get the specific citynamehomesforsale.com domain and now I'm back to the old question of whether to build out a high traffic niche site to capitalize on the exact keyword match or should I just link it to the directory (domain.com/city)

Thanks!

[TomRayner]

First thing's first:

Is the current city page getting any traffic?

If yes - don't change a winning formula.

If not - let's weigh up the options.

By going with a separate domain, you're making the assumption that you'll be able to target the site specifically for the region + product/service and that users might be more likely to convert on a domain that contains the city (which may or may not be true).

By adding to the existing site, you're helping to reinforce the site's brand and you're collecting link equity in one place.  If you have a solid on-site SEO structure, that link equity can be efficiently passed around to rank other pages on your site.  Potentially, you'll get a stronger link equity with this method than you would with a dedicated city site, as you have several cities and products all with the potential to win links.

The citynamehomesforsale.com (unless it has historical links) is unlikely to have any SEO equity itself, meaning you'll be starting from scratch?  Is that really worthwhile, or would you be better off building up your existing web property and brand, utilising the strength it may already have, and attempt to rank your city keywords that way?

I'd be more inclined to look at that method, unless the site is under a form of algorithmic penalty.

Hope this helps

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Joshua,

Ah, yes, back to the old question of this I know how you feel about that and it is definitely an important decision. I'd like to understand:

• Are you running a virtual business, or does your current website represent a physical realty office?

• What would you be putting on the new site? Would this also be branded in some way with the realty office (if this is a realty office and not a virtual business)?

[Jarvatar]

I do have a physical office.   My current set up has a main hub site of domain.com and pages with cities on them and then "neighborhoods" further in.

I would normally never opt for a niche site but I've never had the luxury of an exact keyword match before.  The city itself is large enough (enough content) to stand on it's own - so it's just the effort it would take to get it up on it's own.

I think I answered my own question.  In instances like this if I have the resources then it's worth it only if the city is large enough.   If I was in Texas for example and had Texashomes.com - wouldn't it make sense to have Austinhomes and dallashomes as well and build those out?

Thanks for your response!

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Josh,

I would only suggest building out the nice sites if they are run completely independently of the main company website and do not share any of the NAP (name, address, phone). What you do not want is Google getting confused between the various businesses if they are sharing a name, address or phone number. So, if you simply want these to be independent entities, with no duplicated NAP or content, there might be some value.

[Jarvatar]

Nice, so you feel that the local "NAP" effect is strong enough to erode any SEO gains by having a niche.  Thanks for sharing.

[MiriamEllis]

Hey Josh,

It's kind of a Rule #1 thing - don't put your NAP on more than 1 website (unless we're talking about building citations and earning links, of course!). So, yes, if you want to run multiple sites for what is actually the same business, you'll need to brand them separately and not use any part of the NAP on them. You'd need to think of them as having some other purpose, like educational content or something. In which case, I'd personally prefer to build that out on my own main domain to strengthen my core brand, but I have heard of other taking this multi-site approach, so long as it's treated as a totally different animal.

[Jarvatar]

The original reason for the question was I have a fairly good thing going with my current domain but a keyword specific domain became available.   So I really was wondering if it made sense to build that out (which I decided to do).

Imagine you have Miriamstuff.com  and it's doing well raking 15th for "Blue Whirly Widgets"  However you can't seem to break to the top.  A few of your pages do well "Blue Whirly Widgets with handles" etc.  Then one day you have an opportunity to buy BlueWhirlyWidgets.com... do you take it?

In my example it's real estate specific.  So the domain was a larger city option outside our metro area.

[MiriamEllis]

Hey Josh,

Understood, and I think the basic feedback on this would be buy it if you have a plan for what to do with it, and you're sure that your plan won't be detrimental to what you've accomplished with the main site (like sharing NAP, which would be detrimental). I think that's pretty much what both Tom and I are saying.