An easy subdomain question for you SEO experts

I have a client who owns two health and fitness gyms in different cities. Each gym is different; floor layout, schedule, equipment, workouts, etc.

The company website has information on both gyms, but customers have complained that it can be difficult to determine what information on the site pertains to which gym location.

The client’s solution (the customer is always right ) is to create two totally distinct websites; each identical in layout and design, but different in content *only* where the gyms differ.

The two options proposed below are equally easy to develop, but I am concerned about the very real possiblity of getting into trouble with Google or Yahoo through apparent blackhat SEO techniques, and equally concerned about how each subdomain (or subsection) will fare in search results. What you you guys and gals think:

Would it be better to host each separate website in subdomains:
[tt]pasadena.totalgyms.com/...[/tt]
[tt]losangeles.totalgyms.com/...[/tt]

Or would it be better to host on one domain, but divide the content in separate root directories like so:
[tt]www.totalgyms.com/pasadena/...[/tt]
[tt]www.totalgyms.com/losangeles/...[/tt]

Thanks for lending your expertise.

- Mike

I think subdomain is great!
Such as:
http://pasadena.totalgyms.com
http://losangeles.totalgyms.com

It’s much better than
http://www.totalgyms.com/pasadena/
http://www.totalgyms.com/losangeles/

Because some of my subdomain website now is on the top of the google.

Nowadays with local search and the proliferation of mobile devices, one thing to always keep in mind is the domain’s georelevance to to the user’s location.
If the said gym has a great offline and social media promotion or brand recognition, I wouldn’t be too worried about the temporary shift in Search rankings.

That said, I tend to favor subdomains for the simple reason that Google treats them as independant domains. In other words, pages of a subdomain are crawled independently from those of the top domain. A good way to ensure that both subdomains still receive the ranking benefits of the top domain is to link to them from the top domain, just like bestbuy.com does for language selection. This tells Google that, though the subdomains are independant, they still belong to the same root.

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Quote from: hmnyc at Nov 29, 2010, 10:26 AM

Make 2 separate sites and optimize each site for city it is in. From the url to the content.
DO NOT DUPLICATE CONTENT. You will now have a total of 3 sites.
Use the original site as the directory of your sites and optimize it for broader terms.
Use this for your general health/diet tips. whereas the local sites deal with the class
schedules, location etc.. This leaves room for future expansion.









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Is rhis what I think it is?

And another one bites the dust...

So pro/cons of subdomains.

Subdomains do count as seperate domains (+ or -) this can be negative for small sites which really wouldn’t have a lot of content on a subdomain. It should support being its own site if you are willing to do a subdomain.

I wrote a very large post in response to a franchise SEO question in the HubSpot SEO forums, but here’s a quick snapshot:

"I was in an SEO meeting earlier this year.

Someone (lets just call him blackhat) suggested that there was no way that the presenters ideas were feasible for quickly dominating difficult keyword combinations with 1 url. He advicated a technique similar to yours with 150 seperate domains... it didn’t go over well as a good idea. Now let me tell you why.

SEO should be considered like branding for franchise companies. If you are the franchising company your benefit is NOT for a franchise to have a strong website. Its for your parent company to have a strong website. The stronger your root domain the more value add your brand gives to its franchisees.

Google "fried chicken"... kfc/popeyes are near the top. Why? Focus on core content from a company standpoint. Give each location rights to a section in the website, but by mandating a certain form you are going to end up with better meta data. Richer links. All that good SEO stuff (to your domain). Why build a brand for a single location that could close? Brand your company at all those locations. Brand your company for locations you don’t have yet and provide another negotiating chip when someone wants to get on board...

"We’re already number 4 for "xyz in Panama City" search in google and you haven’t even opened your franchise."

Websites should be branding and sales tools for large companies. It would be foolish to not consider taking a franchise $$$ from each location to fund content people that benefit everyone. $1,000 from 150 locations buys multiple full time content people. 3-5+ content people working on 1 site will dominate much faster (and more importantly long-term) than trying to maintain 150 seperate sites."

Essentially, when creating a website a seperate domain for each location creates an opportunity for you to lose links or split links. This is true of subdomains as well, but at least G can understand they are related better than on 2 domains. Splitting links is a terrible idea. 1,000 links to 1 site trumps 500 links to 2 sites (all other things being equal [link quality]). Plus if you stick to a good nomenclature with some good deeplinks you can really dominate local search results.