Need SEO Opinions

[Scott-Jones]

SEO Campaign and Best Practices

Hello, I have dabbled with MOZ before and I’m coming back with a project that is going to be a marathon. I have a very general question for some of you SEO professionals. I would like to lay out a scenario and I would appreciate any feedback that you can offer.

Let’s say I have a client which is an office cleaning company that just services the local Chicago area, let’s call them ABC123 Commercial Cleaners. They have a website that is Example: abc123commercialcleaners.com. On the website it explains all about their services with several different pages. If we want to start a site on another URL, let’s say officecleaningchicago.com will this hurt our online reputation? Or will it make us stronger?

Our plan on paper is to target the different localities around Chicago

Example:
napervillecommercialcleaners.com
officecleaningchicago.com
evanstonofficecleaning.com

I just wanted to get opinions on whether this is a good or bad idea. If it will strengthen or weaken our brand.

I hope I have explained a very general scenario (which is completely fictitious)  I would appreciate any feedback that you can offer.

[alexspur]

Doing this is generally a bad idea and can be seen from the Google algorithm as an attempt to spam the search engine. You will create new websites that are generally the same as the one you have.  They will not provide any additional information and will be owned by the same company offering the same services. This, in my opinion, is the shortest way to a Google penalty. And even if Google doesn't recognize them a competitor of yours can report them as spam as this is a violation of Google's rules.

[BeanstalkIM]

Hey Scott.

I'd avoid it for two reasons:

1 - you'd have to be careful to avoid ranking for the same term so it's not viewed as spam, and
2 - you'd have to split your resources.

It can take a lot of work to rank, even for local phrases.  A lot of that work is external - citations, links, etc.  All of that will have to be duplicated.  Time that would be better used building out the office section of the site and focusing just on links and citations around business services to that section and starting off ahead due to the weight carried by the primary domain.

Obviously the answer may differ based on the real scenario - there are cases for multiple sites but that's in very specific cases like Search Engine Land having a different site for their conference - basically where there are two completely different offering and user intents.

[MiriamEllis]

Hey Scott,

I'm voting with the other community members on this - it's just not typically a good idea to do this.

Rather than trying a multi-site approach for a single business, invest the resources in building the authority of the existing company assets. The payoff will likely be greater and the management certainly less cumbersome.

[Scott-Jones]

Thank you to everyone for their input. I appreciate your feedback. I'm going to research more about link building and where to start that process. I will advise against the multi-site approach and focus efforts elsewhere.