Hi all,

 

I'm hoping for some advice.

 

If a company offers quite a large range of services, is it possible to get them ranking highly for each of those services when you only have a few pages on the website to play with?

 

Would it be beneficial to create mini-sites for each of the main services and create a bit of a network of sites? And if mini-sites are a good idea, should it be done with sub-domains or separate new domains?

 

Any advice much appreciated.

What kind of keywords are they looking to be ranked for on each page, and how high?

 

To me, this sounds like a lot of work.

It's safe to say that their key areas of business has a lot of competition so it's as high as possible. I am guessing that local SEO is the best way to go.

 

The amount of work isn't really a factor as most work can be done in house. It's just that I'm not sure if I should advise going down the mini site route. There are a few key areas of their business that obviously can't be shouted too much about on the home page because the home page describes the business as a whole. Which is why I thought perhaps a few mini sites for those key areas alone could help bring in business directly for that service.

 

I'm not sure I'm making much sense here!

Optimisation followed by building links - lots of links!

A website isn't going to rank itself otherwise.

 

As for focussing on local search or general search, it depends on what the business is about.

I mean, if it's a garden centre in Bedfordshire that doesn't take online orders, then they have a county sized catch net for example.

 

Local search can be miniscule depending on your niche and area.

Link building is definitely not my strongest area!

 

So, the mini-site idea is pointless?

The mini site idea ends up meaning you'll be doing the work as if they were their own website. 10 mini websites means 10X the work. It's absolutely achievable. I've worked on websites that have 5 pages and rank highly for competitive markets.

 

The more pages a website has simply means more chance of getting long tail stuff.

 

It all depends really on how many keywords you'll be targeting per page. I usually suggest 5 per page but these are just guidelines I use.

 

What are the keywords? PM me them and I can check just how competitive they are

The amount of work honestly isn't an issue so don't worry about that part. There would only be 2 or 3 and the design is all there, it's just transferring content and optimising.

 

The issue is that this company offers a collection of services that are being termed as 'business development'. However, my suspicion is that perhaps their key services could have their own separate site or mini-site on a sub-domain to catch people who are looking for that specific term rather than just 'business development'. It's just a way to increase levels of business.

 

So if the workload is not a factor, is it worth doing?

I think if there's more than just an SEO reason behind it, then go for it. Yes, you can rank any website for any keyword. You could rank a one page website no problem.

 

But then it's making sure that the website is useful. If you're company offers services that could be given their own seperate website, then go for it. You could easily do this with one page on a website (many large companies do this no problem, and it will help you rank so much better) but if the services have so much information, and would benefit from their own website, then go for it.

 

 

How I'd do it is set up a services section domain.com/services and then from there, have various pages about the various services. Each page will then rank/can be targeted for particular keywords.

 

If you're constrained by the number of pages on a website, then go for the mini site idea.

Hi Jason,

 

Thanks for the response.

 

There are no page limits, and at present the file structure is domain.com/services/ with further pages e.g. domain.com/services/service1, domain.com/services/service2. Is it possible to get a website ranking for a particular service from pages that are in sub-folders compared to a completely separate domain?

 

I'm interested in what you're saying about one page websites. The consensus used to be that one page websites were difficult to optimise to rank highly....I thought lots of content was key and you can only have so much on a one page website, so what has changed?

 

Many thanks

It's probably easier to rank sub-pages then a whole new website. With a good internal link structure, any link building effort on one page will benefit the others. Your domain will gain authority overall and this will do nothing but benefit every page on the website.

 

Lots of content is good, if you have a lot to talk about. The last thing you want to do is create content for search engines.

 

If you search google for "Tshirts", not many of those are dedicated websites. they're sub-pages of a much larger domain.

 

Again, the same with "Jeans". I know I'm using a product keyword here, but it's the same regardless.

 

I always treat sub-pages as their own website. Target each page for a set of keywords and do the link building that way. Infact, SEO wise, it's better because it's more natural

OK, to rank on competitive terms, you are going to have to build links. Having mini sites really it depends on how different each of the sites are. In other words you maybe able to get more backlinks in more specific areas if you do have mini sites and they do focus on different topics.

 

Also if the site has such a range of topics, by breaking the website into a number of sites will help you focus the keywords more specifically and make it easier for Google to rank them. It also means that you can buy domain names with the keywords in, which will help you.

 

On the other hand by focusing your time on just one site, would mean that you are more likely to gain more backlinks and spend more time on social networking to gain traffic and awareness for that site.

 

Its not an easy call and really depends on site and the variety of the content the site covers.

 

Good luck, with whatever route you choose.

Edited January 11, 201313 yr by Neil@creative

It's probably easier to rank sub-pages then a whole new website. With a good internal link structure, any link building effort on one page will benefit the others. Your domain will gain authority overall and this will do nothing but benefit every page on the website.

 

Lots of content is good, if you have a lot to talk about. The last thing you want to do is create content for search engines.

 

If you search google for "Tshirts", not many of those are dedicated websites. they're sub-pages of a much larger domain.

 

Again, the same with "Jeans". I know I'm using a product keyword here, but it's the same regardless.

 

I always treat sub-pages as their own website. Target each page for a set of keywords and do the link building that way. Infact, SEO wise, it's better because it's more natural

 

Agree, lots of sub pages targeting each area & keyword would be the best bet... link juice is passed on from the main url..

 

Another option could be sub domains, but i think sub folders would be the best bet