Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Google frowns upon businesses that include keywords within the business name. You would get your listing deleted from Google if you include World Of Books in your title.

What is everyone's thoughts on creating several websites for your business for each department.

For example.. say you owned a car dealership.

You create a different site for:

• New cars for sale
• Used cars for sale
• Service department -mechanical repairs
• Parts & accessories department
• Financing department

Positives:

Having separate sites for each department would probably make it easier  to rank on the specific search terms. Since a whole site on one topic Ie. Used cars would rank over just a page with the same information on a dealership website.

Negatives:

• You would have to maintain 5 sites
• Link building
• Social Media
• Analytics
• ETC.
• Since they are all new domains & sites it will take longer for each site to rank.
• Google will see them as small lower authority sites since they are only a few pages & not larger sites.

What is everyone's thoughts on this? Would you create several small sites? Or would you continue working on one big main authority site & continue link earning to the specific department pages, blogging on the topics etc.

Thanks for any help & opinions!

Thanks all. This is what I had recommended to the client to begin with. I just needed some backup from all you smart SEO's out there.

Unfortunately the URL would not be for sale as it's a brick and mortar business.

Thanks again!

I'm trying to outrank a website with the following:

Website with #1 ranking for a search query with "City & Brand"

• Domain Authority - 2
• Domain Age - 11 years & 9 months old
• Has both the City & brand in the URL name.
• The site is crap, outdated.. probably last designed in the 90's, old layouts, not a lot of content & NO keywords in the titles & descriptions on all pages.

My site ranks 5th for the same keyword.. BEHIND 4 pages from the site described above.

• Domain Authority - 2
• Domain Age - 4 years & 2 months old
• Has only the CITY in the URL.
• Brand new site design this past year, new content & individual keywords in the titles, descriptions on each page.

My main question is.... do you think it would be be beneficial to buy a new domain name with the BRAND in the URL  & CITY & 301 redirect my 4 year old domain to the new domain to pass along the authority it has gained.

Will having the brand in the URL make much of a difference?

Do you think that small step would even help to beat the crappy but old site out?

Thanks for any help & suggestions on how to beat this old site or at least show up second.

Exactly. I want a wordpress integration however they are pushing for a Google Blogger saying it won't make a difference.

I'm just looking for peoples opinions &  thoughts on the topic as I'd like to prove to them that Wordpress subfolder is the best option.

Thanks!

Yes! That is what I'm pushing for is a subfolder. However my IT department is pushing back and saying they can only achieve this in a sub directory. Thanks for supporting my thoughts.

We are looking into offering blogs for our customers on their current sites that we have built & host for them.

My developers have given me 2 options.

1. Sub domain with a hosted blog.

2. A Google Blogger blog with our customers sub-domain pointed to it.

In my opinion I feel that a blog hosted on the sub domain is a better option as it is more authority then a Google Blogger blog.

What does everyone think? Having a blog hosted on the subdomain would help with authority building vs. a Google Blogger site?

Thanks for any help!

Thanks!

Is the above statement correct? I've read that its better to have different SEO titles & descriptions for mobile sites as users search differently on mobile devices.

I've also read it's good to link build, keep text content on mobile sites etc to get the mobile site to rank.

If I choose to not have titles & descriptions on my mobile site will Google just rank our desktop version & then redirect a user on a mobile device to our mobile site or should I be adding in titles & descriptions into the mobile site?

Thanks so much for any help!

Yes thanks. My question wasn't to stop using them at all. My question was if people were not using them with keywords anymore to simulate a webpage not being overly optimized.

There has been a lot of talk lately about making a website seem like it is not SEO'd to avoid over optimization penalties with the recent Google Algorithmic updates.

Has anyone come across the practice of not using Headings (H1's, H2's etc..) properly to simulate that the current webpage isn't over optimized?

I've come across a site that used to use multiple keywords within their headings & now they are using none. In fact they are marking their company name & logo as an H1 and non keyworded H2's such as our work or Contact.

Is anyone holding back on their old SEO tactics to not seem over optimized to Google?

Thanks!

I have  PR tool. I threw in some low PR sites & higher PR sites to see if anyone said there was a difference between all my links but I do appreciate the reassurance that I'm on the right track.

Thanks for the articles. I've read them through.

The articles I've been reading are all articles that have been written since May 2012 to August 2012 mostly on Search EngineLand & SEOMOZ as well as Digital Marketing webinars from Optify.

I've been doing a lot of research lately on link building & I've read a lot about having a diverse amount of links.

Social links, Blog links, comment links, footer links, No follow links, Directory links as well as links with Anchor text URL match, brand match, partial brand match, non-descriptive, and with keywords.

But there is a lot of talk of removing those links that look like a site that's built just for link building purposes.... but Directories are basically built for link building are they not?

I'm wondering if anyone can tell me if they feel links from the following directories would be bad links. (Non-Paid)

http://www.yoganza.com

http://www.wkool.com

http://www.wee-directory.com

http://www.voicelet.com

www.hotfrog.ca

http://www.webdirectorieslist.com

http://multiplelistingboard.com

http://mozdirectory.net

http://freedirectorypr.info

Industry specific below:

http://bestautolinks .com

http://automotivedome.com

http://automobilebuzz.com

http://craigsautolinks.com

Thanks so much for the help!

I've been having issues getting my Google Places/+ listing verified as we have an automatic phone system. If you call our office you have to dial a number to reach an actual human being or before you can leave a message.

Whenever the Google Bot calls we aren't able to receive our Google Place verification code.

Currently.. there is no option to send a postcard.. which is weird because for awhile  that was the only option.

Has anyone had any success on an automated phone system & how did you do it?

Thanks!

Great!

Now is the only way to find old pages that weren't redirected to a new site is through webmaster tools correct?

Are there any other tools out there that would find old URLS.. URLS maybe even a year old that weren't redirected?

Thanks for all the reassurance so far.

Thanks.  I have a custom 404 page but what if I'm looking to pass along the link juice from pages on an old site to the new site. Will this pass along any page authority by just redirecting it to the root domain?

Yes. That's what has happened in the past. Once we've claimed it we were able to manage it. However it is doing what I explained above. We aren't able to manage it.

I'm wondering if anyone else has been having this issue & if they know what could be potentially causing this error.

Thanks

Yes. That is what should be done I agree.

But since it wasn't done.. instead of just leaving it & not doing anything about it... would it be better to redirect any 404 pages to the root domain in the mean time?

Or should it be left until we can redirect all the individual pages to their appropriate new page?

Thanks

After a new site redesign ...would it hinder our rankings if we 301 redirected all old URLS that are returning 404 error codes to the root domain (home page) ?

Would this be a good temporary solution until we are able to redirect the pages to the appropriate corresponding page?

Thanks so much!