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To continue this discussion, here is an interesting thing that happened today. It might be a little egotistical but I have a Google Alert set up for my name. I was thrilled to get an alert today that I was mentioned in Forbes. Woohooo. The article mentions my name and an article I wrote and then links to: https://moz.com/ugc/what-is-an-unnatural-link-an-in-depth-look-at-the-google-quality-guidelines So, if I had published that content on my own site I could have had a link from Forbes. But...is that true? Most likely if I had published that content on my own site it wouldn't have had the authority to rise to the top of the SERPS and it wouldn't have had nearly as much exposure as it got on the Moz blog. So, I am guessing that I would not have gotten a link from Forbes and I would not have been mentioned by them either. I think that as I get more authority there are some articles that I want to publish on my own site, but there are others that I want to publish elsewhere for the exposure. One thing that I find does well on my own site is if I do a study with unique information, or if I write an article on a very specific topic. But, if I am writing about a broad subject, at this point an article on my own site is not likely to outrank Moz and SEW.

Hi Andrew - Great follow up questions from you! There is zero risk in creating local landing pages on your website for your new branches. It's a very good idea, but should be undertaken with the understanding that the end goal of this practice is organic rankings, not local pack rankings. Without a Google+ Local page for each location, you will not rank locally. But, you could potentially earn some organic visibility. You might like to check out: http://moz.com/blog/local-landing-pages-guide End of the day - whether you also create Google+ Local pages is, as you say, up to your judgment, based on your take on how closely the new locations align with Google's guidelines. Wishing you good luck!

Happy to help, good luck!

Hosting these pages as subfolders instead of subdomains should be fine, and is the "traditional" way of presenting new content with the highest likelihood that the content will inherit authority from its parent domain from an SEO point of view. They should rank just as well as if they were on subdomains or separate domains. Separate installations and themes should not make a difference; Google will be absolutely clear in its understanding that these sub-brands are related to the main brand and to each other, so assuming you are fine with this, different design and CMS installations will not make a difference.