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i don't see any reason, in your exposition, to choose any different route than first option check the domain authority of the second level domain your client is currently using and evaluate how much time and money you need to replicate the same DA to a new domain, then ask yourself and your client if it's worth it. Don't forget to mention all that work to rank for the new domain is not going to help the old one, and when same DA is reached you will still have to face duplicate effort to improve DA of both. of course there are other factors which could still weight in favor of the separate domain, like banaly if she want to take distance from her main practice, if the existing domain suffered from penalization, etc... but without knowing much I don't see a reason to go that way

What do I tell her to alleviate her fear that she's not ranking for a ton of keywords and that this other guy is creating crap content? Keep these in mind.... **1) It is important to stay focused.   ** If client hired you to focus on valuable keywords such as (A) and (B) then they call you because they are not ranking for (F) and (G), which are not valuable keywords, then you need to revisit the original plan withe client (chase valuable keywords).   They need to know that putting work into (F) and (G) are less likely to move their income needed and going after them in addition would not be as valuable as putting MORE work into (A) and (B). 2) Promising rankings vs Promising a work agenda Clients need to know that when you quote them a price that you will do specific work for them.  The results of that work might produce certain rankings, however, you have no control over what work competitors are putting in or will start putting in after they realize that you are on the attack  --  then the work that you "thought" would produce certain results will not achieve them because competitors have raised the bar.  Every time you raise your clients income or rankings that was done at the expense of a competitor and some of them will respond vigorously. So I would always go into any project with educating the client that the work you do might be offset or more than offset by work done by the competition.   The client is paying you to compete, the client is not paying you to assume all competitive risks that are in their industry.   That should fall fully on them - not on you. If a webmaster in my niche decides he wants to overtake me and hires an SEO to add more fuel to his fire the result might be a decrease in rankings for HIM.  Why?  He needs to be adding fuel at the same rate as me just to keep up and faster than me if he expects to get ahead. 3) Chase rankings or chase keyword reach? At my office two people work all day, every day, trying to increase the keyword reach of the website.  (KW reach = getting great content, best-on-the-web or close to it, out there for more and more keywords)   We might "watch" rankings, but we don't "work on rankings".   Working on keyword reach is a guaranteed success almost every time because you pickup new traffic for new keywords.  And as you get more and more great, best-on-the-web, content out there your site starts earning a bigger and bigger fan base and more and more sharing.  The result of that generally, over time, results in an increase in rankings. So, we are running a factory for quality content.  Instead of working on rankings we are putting everything into "reach".  And that is where I am betting all of my money. (This will work for you if you are working in a niche with great keyword breadth... but if you are working where keyword breadth is really narrow you can run through the reach in a couple of years.  But some industries can keep two people busy for decades.)

Ryan has offered some great ideas.  Lots of those are not normally considered until after the problems hit. As a general rule, if you merge multiple websites, you unite their strengths and assets.  This is done by placing a 301 redirect on each of the existing domains so that any traffic that enters the site will be redirected to a destination on the combined site. If you have a main website like LakesidePrimaryCare.com, then each physician would have a personal profile page on that site.  I would redirect each of their former sites to their personal page on the combined site.   If you do that, their personal page will receive the strength from their previous site and help their personal page rank for queries like... "Dr Egol in scranton PA".   (Some benefit would also go into the entire site for any query that they are optimized to rank for.) If all of the redirects go to the homepage of the site it will give maximum power for the new site rank for "doctors in Scranton PA".  Which might be more beneficial for all but might be less satisfying individually.  (I would want this if I was one of the physicians, but I tend to be a team player rather than looking for maximum individual benefits.)  I believe that this option gives maximum benefit to everyone. In my opinion, and others will disagree, the old domains must remain on hosting with DNS pointing at them permanently and that 301 redirect must be in place permanently.   This can be done without paying hosting for all of the domains, if you have a server where multiple domains can be routed.  If this is not done any link popularity will be lost.

No worries and good idea to toss the question of concern out to the Moz community. In the future, if it's anything having to do with Google or any new "up and coming" solution or search criteria change, then check with Google first, then check the Blogs here at Moz or elsewhere because I'm sure content writers would LOVE to be the first to hit on a new idea for how to rank in Google. Hopefully you can put your clients at ease Patrick

Thanks for your input. I started playing around with the Rank Checker Firefox extension this morning, and I like it so far. I was just hoping to add more tools to my arsenal in addition to Moz's keyword ranking tool.

Thanks for the input, I appreciate it!

Hi Rachel, So, for a multi-location local business like your medical practice, you should NOT be attempting to merge with Google+ as it is unsupported. You should simply be creating a local listing through the Google Places for Business Dashboard for each of the physical locations the company runs. Do not merge!