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I actually have an SEO question, I think the first one ever in a very long time :D this is for the big guys out there who do white hat SEO for large companies primarily. As many of you know I am the SEO marketing/eCommerce Manager for a very large retail company based out of Los Angeles (hence why I don't have much time to crack nifty software much these days). We are a massive online retail store that sells nationwide through our website, Azon, eBay, Vendor Central etc...but primarily our website. So we do not have a physical store.

However we recently opened a willcall center for local customers where people can call or order online then choose what day and time they would like to pick up their order in person to save on shipping costs. Kind of like ordering a pizza for pickup, but instead its actual retail product. My question is, since we wan't to market our will call/local pickup service to only local customers I was thinking about designing a separate website to rank with local SEO since our main site ranks nationwide and not locally. I happen to already own the perfect domain "example - www(.)ournichelosangeles(.)com" and was wondering if this would be a good idea. The website would be hosted on my personal server so it would not be on the same IP as our main site...the website of course would be feature rich with tons of unique, quality content as I want it to attract customers. Though the website would direct customers to our main website/store to place their order. Would this be considered a doorway page (black hat SEO) or do you guys think I will be safe?

Hi sorry to be rude and answer a question with a question but why not simply add a page to your existing site focusing on each "local area" you want to cover?
Subdomain sounds good in theory but extra work plus google does not differentiate between subdomain.youdomain.com and yourdomain.com/subdomain meaning if your just building out your subdomain for a local area just build a page for your local area and do some seo on this, plus google does allow multiple locations for a business.
Again sorry to be rude and answer with a question.

(04-30-2015 07:13 AM)icedsoul Wrote: [ -> ]Hi sorry to be rude and answer a question with a question but why not simply add a page to your existing site focusing on each "local area" you want to cover?
Subdomain sounds good in theory but extra work plus google does not differentiate between subdomain.youdomain.com and yourdomain.com/subdomain meaning if your just building out your subdomain for a local area just build a page for your local area and do some seo on this, plus google does allow multiple locations for a business.
Again sorry to be rude and answer with a question.

You are not being rude at all. :) The subdomain was my first consideration but here are the reasons why it's not really an option.

1.) The separate domain, with the keyword/location will rank much better. Los Angeles CA is probably the most cut throat location to rank a website in any niche, especially ours.

2.) We only have one local pickup center, that won't ever change.

3.) Our webmaster is the most hardheaded person I have ever worked with, he wouldn't even make a sub domain for our blog and enjoys fighting me an everything for no reason. Seeing he is the CEO's best pal I don't get much say against him.

So sub-domain isn't really an option. Thank you for the response though :)

I know Google allows multiple domains for multiple locations, but my concern on this is that we need to direct the customer to our main site to place their order. I am worried for that reason it might be seen as a doorway page.

ok got ya, number 3 is a real fecker ay... so why the worry, you do realise many amazon/ebay affiliate sites do this consistantly and still rank, it is a doorway page and that is all it can be, if your providing this for your customers do not worry about google, you could grab a few of that locations fave products and host them on each page so it's not a doorway?... kinda like personalising each local area with selected products... but as mentioned above if this is for your customers I would not worry about Google or any other search engine, concentrate on a good social standing and the rest should follow.
Just saying I would'nt worry to much about google all my customers are on social networks.