Few months ago, a prospective client contacted me. He’s based from Australia and he want to hire me for a fix rate of around Php20,000 I believe, and he wants me to manage and rank his 5 websites.
Wherein, 4 of those websites is about his wedding photography service for different parts in Australia. For example, 1 for Adelaide, 1 for Sydney, 1 for Perth, and 1 for Queens. But all of the websites are referring to him, his wedding photography service. The other website was his upcoming photography competition.
Is it Right to Have Multiple Websites for 1 Brand?
I do get the logic why they make 1 website on each area, but all of those 4 websites are on different names that you wouldn’t know that they’re the same, or a sister company of the other.
Maybe one of the logic is to be able to rank locally for each area, that, I understand. Cool.
Another maybe is that to be able to say that they’re from that area – but really, they’re based in Sydney.
And of course, the other is to give link to the other to boost the other.
But it all comes down to one thing, Where’s the branding?
These days, it’s all about the branding. Will it be also weird if you say “hey I’m Gay Aida Dumaguing, the photographer for Company 1 in Manila, Company 2 in Cebu, Company 3 from Davao…” and it’s also so confusing. Would it be better to say “Hi! My name is Gay, and I’m a photographer, you may visit my website at mywebsite.com and see my work samples, I offer photography services in Cebu, Manila, and Davao.” You can then insert a joke that “basically, I’m your all around photographer…”
It’s more clear who you are, what your brand is, and what you do, that you’re not only a photographer for a specific region, but to a number of regions.
But I want to specifically target a region by having the region name on the URL!
One of the reasons why do businesses do this is that they want to target a specific region by using the keyword with a region name on the website URL. For example “bestphotographerManila.com” sure, that could work, sure that helps with SEO, but again we come back to branding.Let me ask you this, will that name or brand name mark your customers mind? I don’t even remember the websites I’ve visited when I’m looking for something, how much more of you don’t leave a name on your brand that will really mark your customers mind?
If you really want to do this, you can just make a website, and take advantage of the subdomain. Like this site of mine for example, instead of making a new site “PhilippinesSEOSpecialist.com” I made it to “resume.gadumaguing.com”, because people I meet ask my resume, and it’s easier for me to just say just go to my website and click “resume”.
In our example (the photography) we can just make “manila.yourname.com” which makes your potential customers remember your name, your name is your brand, and in the subdomain of Manila, you can then state there what you offer for your potential customers in Manila.
With this, still referring to 1 brand, it is multiple websites, but it’s easier to browse, easier to remember.
Some people are just reading too much SEO articles that they forgot about branding and marketing.
In terms of SEO, you’ll just spending a lot of money since you’ll have to optimize for each website. And if you’ll hire a SEO company or a freelancer like me who charge per website, and you have 5 websites, it will surely be costly for you and the effect is just the same if you’re having 1 website.