In attempting to optimize local search for a site in three different geographical locations, would it be better to set up different domains pointing to a page customized for that area or just use individual pages on one domain. For example: www.widgets.com marketing to Houston TX, Tampa FL, and Memphis TN, where people will be searching for "widgets in __________" Option 1: Set up 3 sites, www.houstonwidgets.com, tampawidgets.com, and memphiswidgets.com with each site being stand alone linked to main site or pointed to page within site. Option 2: Create individual urls www.widgets.com/tampa, widgets.com/memphis, and widgets.com/houston with the same customized local information on each page. Obviously option 2 would be the easiest and least expensive but may not provide results we are looking for which is highest rankings possible for the search "widgets in houston" Thanks
Option 1 because you give yourself more options when marketing these sites. With 3 separate sites if you choose article marketing you can write 3 separate articles geared towards each widget in each region that will have links pointing back to each of those sites. If you go with directory submission for some easy backlinks, you are able to target all 3 sites with there own unique information. You could cross link between the 3 sites, as long as you have them on separate C block ip addresses (some consider this unethical). With having 3 separate sites, you really give yourself 3 roads to go down for marketing them as opposed to just 1 road with 1 one website to all 3 products.
You can do this with just one specific domain name, I would use sub-domains personally because it's easier to manage the city specific content; sub-domains and sub-folders have the same SEO value, one isn't better than the other. However, you can fit your location keyword more than once in the URL if you use sub-domains...' dallas.domain.com/dallas-texas-blue-widgets.html <--- strictly an example, not ment for live use.