Domain History
Regardless of how long you have had your existing website, the truth is that tenure in your domain is valuable. The older the website is, the more valuable it will be. If you decide to open a new website, you will essentially walk away from the strides that you have made with establishing your existing domain, and be forced to start from scratch.
For this reason alone, most of the time, you will want to keep your existing website. The only exception to this is if you are starting a completely new business that is not at all relevant to your current practice.
Local Optimization
In order to begin ranking for your new location, you will want to create a local citation page and new map listing through each of the major search engines. This will help your new brick-and-mortar location become recognized when potential patients search for your practice online.
Population and SEO Architecture
In many cases, a website is built around one specific location to target one major population. If you are opening up a new location serving the same general population as the first—for example, if you are currently on the east side of Manhattan and opening up a location on the west side of Manhattan—nothing in the architecture needs to change except that you will add a new location page.
However, if you are opening up a new location that is farther from your current location—for example, you are on the east side of Manhattan and opening up a new location on Long Island, you will need to make more adjustments to the SEO architecture. These adjustments will help you to begin ranking for both intended populations. In this situation, in addition to the location page, you will need to look at the following:
- URLs
- Page titles
- Header 1
Begin incorporating your new location name into these parts of the website, so that the search engines recognize this and help your patients find your practice with ease.
