Have 2 websites (small businesses) - and would like to go down to 1 ... seo problems or?

[djxput]

Hi,

Basically I have 2 small businesses in 2 separate cities (20~ miles between the two), I have 2 separate websites that I run (but I havnt messed with them for ages) - they look quite dated and I was planning on making a whole new website and would like to combine the 2.

#1 to save on costs - double the hosting costs per year (I use wix btw).
#2 to save on time if I want to change or ad something I dont need to do it twice. They offer the same service just I work in different locations.

My Seo is decent but could use improvement; but what Im wondering is if I make it one site will I mess up my seo, can I call my business a different name (ie the name on google map has the city name in it and I was thinking of making it more generic so I could have the same name in both cities... if that makes sense).

ie my main objective is to lower costs to run the site; streamline it so its easier to change and I dont feel like its so much work, make a whole new modern site and make an online booking system which I need. But if it will be bad for my seo not sure I will.

What do you think?

 

[dav3evans]

I think as long as you get all of the pages from the 2 old sites and make sure you can facilitate forwarding them on to a relevant page in the new site, you shouldn't have too much of an issue. Could be worth keeping one of the established sites and updating that though rather than getting started with a new site that has to establish itself. I'll be honest I'm not too on top of how Google regards new sites vs older ones these days, but something to look into perhaps.

Another thought is the address of each business and how they show up when someone searches for "service you offer] near me" in Google. Having 2 addresses with 20 miles between them might yield overall better results than picking 1 address and running with that, because although you have 2 locations, you're effectively turning them into 1 business with 2 locations. I don't have experience dealing with that in Google, but I assume they'll have the ability to accommodate for that.

One thing I do know is they'll let you change your business name easily enough in their business profile area (assuming that's what you mean) if you're talking about what the search results themselves show, that'll be down to updating the pages and waiting for them to be crawled and indexed by Google so the results are up to date.

Hopefully some of that is helpful and not just waffle

 

[djxput]

I think as long as you get all of the pages from the 2 old sites and make sure you can facilitate forwarding them on to a relevant page in the new site, you shouldn't have too much of an issue. Could be worth keeping one of the established sites and updating that though rather than getting started with a new site that has to establish itself. I'll be honest I'm not too on top of how Google regards new sites vs older ones these days, but something to look into perhaps.

Another thought is the address of each business and how they show up when someone searches for "service you offer] near me" in Google. Having 2 addresses with 20 miles between them might yield overall better results than picking 1 address and running with that, because although you have 2 locations, you're effectively turning them into 1 business with 2 locations. I don't have experience dealing with that in Google, but I assume they'll have the ability to accommodate for that.

One thing I do know is they'll let you change your business name easily enough in their business profile area (assuming that's what you mean) if you're talking about what the search results themselves show, that'll be down to updating the pages and waiting for them to be crawled and indexed by Google so the results are up to date.

Hopefully some of that is helpful and not just waffle

thanks for your help. Yes thats what I was concerned about a bit with the search for "... near me" or just general seo stuff. My seo stuff is ok now but I just like the idea of one website since its the same business just in 2 locations (ie client based).

 

[dav3evans]

A very swift Google of "Managing Google My Business for Multiple Locations" shows some helpful stuff. I think the key will be having that business profile set up correctly as that'll faciliate multiple locations. Then when you do put the site together, clear indications of there being 2 locations will make it straight forward for people to find what they want. Even going so far as to have the phone number for each location in the header, and clearly labelled, so as soon as someone hits the homepage, they've got a way to get in touch.

Completely understand the desire to put the 2 sites down into one, especially if they're the same thing and you're duplicating effort and cost, a little time spent tweaking it now while you update the site will pay off later for sure.

 

[djxput]

A very swift Google of "Managing Google My Business for Multiple Locations" shows some helpful stuff. I think the key will be having that business profile set up correctly as that'll faciliate multiple locations. Then when you do put the site together, clear indications of there being 2 locations will make it straight forward for people to find what they want. Even going so far as to have the phone number for each location in the header, and clearly labelled, so as soon as someone hits the homepage, they've got a way to get in touch.

Completely understand the desire to put the 2 sites down into one, especially if they're the same thing and you're duplicating effort and cost, a little time spent tweaking it now while you update the site will pay off later for sure.

ahh thanks for that. Ive only been concentrating on the actually work I do and not on the business aspect of this and marketing aspect - but I need too now since my work has decreased quite a bit and its most likely due to not working on the other aspects of it.

 

[radderfire]

Changing long-established sites definitely can ruin your search positions, at least for a while.

Whether it's a big deal or not really depends on how competitive the search terms are and how much the SEO position is worth to you as a business. It's hard to answer your question without knowing what the terms involved are. I would take a guess that they aren't ultra competitive, which would mean going down to one website to save costs is something that could be considered.

Ultimately, SEO can be fixed. However, there are some advantages with separate websites in terms of being able to use different locations for each, and use the home page instead of a sub page to target your main term.