Do I need redirects?

[greg artim]

I have a Pennsylvania Lemon Law website at www.ihatethislemon.com . I recently purchased www.erielemonlaw.com, www.harrisburglemonlaw.com and www.philadelphialemonlaw.com (these represent the large cities in PA). I made each of the city based domains a single page with limited content (which I will add to later). The hyperlinks on all of the city pages point to the main site at www.ihatethislemon.com or its subpages like About Us, Contact, etc... Is it OK to do that, or should I make all of the city based domains redirect to sub-pages at www.ihatethislemon.com? (Such as having www.philadelphialemonlaw.com redirect to www.ihatethislemon.com/philadelphialemonlaw.) My office is located in Pittsburgh. The reason for the other city based domains is to establish a presence in the search results for those who perform city based searches, but I dont want to hurt the rankings of my main site. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[kgun]

What gives the best meaning (is semantically most correct)?

Related WPW thread: Semantical linking

[incrediblehelp]

I dont understand developing and maintaining multiple websites when you can easily make it easier fro the SE's and users to have all this information on one website.

[greg artim]

The extra domains are single page entities for the purpose of focusing on city specific searches in large cities in PA. If someone does a search for "erie lemon law attorney" then I expect erielemonlaw.com to show up in search, which it does. When they get to the domain erielemonlaw.com, if they click on any hyperlink such as "PA Lemon Law FAQ's" or "Free Case Review" they go to my main site at Pittsburgh Pennsylvania (PA) Lemon Law Attorney, which looks exactly the same as erielemonlaw.com. So my question remains as to whether my structure is OK or whether it will eventually hurt me in SE rankings for the main site.

[Webnauts]

If I got you right, you have a problem called duplicated content. On of both sites will be dropped by Google.

[inertia]

I had a similar problem with a student housing directory a few weeks ago. We decided to focus our attention on one domain name with specific geographical sub domains.

You should be able to get the relevant pages/sub domains from your main site to rank highly for their specific keywords/phrases. Rather than waste time and money running multiple domains put all your efforts into making the main site a fully comprehensive site with highly relevant content and IB links for each city.

[greg artim]

You guys are missing my question here. Perhaps I didnt explain it well. I have a main site at www.ihatethislemon.com that generally covers PA Lemon Law. I went out and purchased erielemonlaw.com, philadelphialemonlaw.com and harrisburglemonlaw.com, solely for the purpose of having them show up in search results in those cities. They do not have much content, merely "Are you driving a lemon in Erie" "We can help" and that sort of thing. They are one page only. If a visitor then clicks on "Free Case Review" on those sites, they are sent to the main site at www.ihatethislemon.com, and I am guessing that they will not really notice the switch because all of the sites look the same. There is no duplicate content here, merely landing pages for different cities in PA to eventually direct them to my main site.

My question remains, should I keep all of those new domains by themselves, or should I have them redirect to the main site? In other words, should I leave www.erielemonlaw standing on its own, or should I have it redirect to www.ihatethislemon.com/erie_lemon_law?

Webnauts, you were a PA guy, help me out.

[cimmeronstudios]

I think what they're trying to tell you is what you're doing isn't the best idea. What you're describing is a doorway site and it's pretty much frowned upon by the SEs. The site as you're describing it will have little/no real content and simply filter traffic back to your 'main' site. Bad idea.

The only way you could possibly make this would would be to maintain completely different content on EACH of the new domains you just bought, in effect, making them each BRAND NEW sites.

Linking back to your main site isn't going to do anything for you; it'll hurt you.

There isn't much benefit to having the keywords in the domain, if that's what you were shooting for.

You'd be better off making new pages on your main site that target the state driven keywords, put state based content up on those pages and consider a Google PPC campaign to target certain regions. That way, you're targeting those areas/keywords, drawing traffic to your main site, which should have stellar content about your product/service and you're fluffing the content on your main site, making it more relevant and rank-worthy.

If you absolutely insist on doing what you described, it would be best to make each site it's own entity. Don't link to your main site from a single page site, bad idea. Don't put duplicate content up on your new sites, bad idea.

So, in short, there's not really an answer to your question (in my opinion) other than it's a bad idea all the way around.

Hope that helps...

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by cimmeronstudios

You'd be better off making new pages on your main site that target the state driven keywords, put state based content up on those pages and consider a Google PPC campaign to target certain regions. That way, you're targeting those areas/keywords, drawing traffic to your main site, which should have stellar content about your product/service and you're fluffing the content on your main site, making it more relevant and rank-worthy.

Exactly!

[Webnauts]

I agree with the others here. Also I would like to add here my tutorial I published recently, which I guess could be very helpful for you: Local Search Optimization Tips - SEO Workers