Single or separate websites for consumer sales and investing biz?

Question

Hello,

I'm working on building my real estate brand and am having a hard time deciding how much to combine or separate the sales side of my business from the investing side of things. My intuition is for the sake of clarity, keeping people's attention, maximizing SEO results, and reducing liability that operating two separate companies and brands may be best. I own MyOhioProperty.com and EvolvedProperty.com. I have been imagining building my sales website (buyers guide, community pages, IDX integration, home valuation page, etc) on MyOhioProperty.com and then building Evolvedproperty.com to give details on our services including making cash offers on homes, renovations, and our homes for rent. For the forseeable future, it's very likely I'll keep my sales business in Ohio while there is a high likelihood I will invest out of state.

So my concern with the plan above is it's splitting my recourses in two and I'm not starting with much. I would prefer to find a way to put my marketing dollars toward one brand, neither company name strikes me as perfectly all encompassing though. EvolvedProperty is somewhat vague and doesn't automatically trigger thoughts of a home sale. I feel like MyOhioProperty is a bit more self explanatory, even though it doesn't directly have sales in it. Even if money weren't a concern, two companies will limit me in other ways such as what marketing would I choose to put on vehicles, introducing two companies to people I network with, etc.

I've spent a long time trying to find a better company name that has a .com domain open and I probably don't have to tell you all, it's damn hard to find good openings these days. If something like EasyHomes.com was open this whole dillema would probably be solved, I've spent 10's of hours searching and these are the two best names I've come up with. I also own BetterResidence, SelectShelter and SunnyShelter (all .com) but when polling friends, many replied both had immediate negative connotation (they thought of homeless and animal shelters) and I fear I will forever be asked if it's betterresidence or betterresidents. MyOhioProperty could be the answer if I knew I wanted to invest only in Ohio, but I'm sure I DON'T want to limit myself to just this state. And I really don't want to build a new site for every state I enter.

I realize this is really long winded and without much direction, I'm just lost on how to move forward so would really appreciate some outside input or perspective at this point. I also haven't consulted an attorney on this and am wondering if having investing (I buy houses cash type marketing) and licensed sales marketing on one website is too much of a conflict of interest even if disclosures are in place. AHHHH

Options:

1. MyOhioProperty.com for all real estate activity including PM, investing, and sales.

2. EvolvedProperty.com for all real estate activity including PM, investing, and sales.

3. MyOhioProperty.com for sales and EvolvedProperty.com for investing/I buy homes cash type marketing.

4. Something else/spend more time domain and business name hunting.

Thanks for your time,

Riley Gilson · Answer

@Tucker Long

I would reccomend as Account Closed said and create several niche sites. Your results will be better, albeit more work.

You could also create a holdings company for all your entities as I have done with various digital enterprises. This would allow you to say I own this, which does bla, bla, and bla.

From an SEO perspective you could try content marketing your holdings company and segregate the traffic from there. This would require some great UX and design to communicate to customers effectively and avoid a high bounce rate but it isn't impossible. You would just talk about your other properties in the third person which would create some overlap, but more content (if done right).

When they get to your site, have them immediately choose to head to/from the blog to the appropriate business site. Those businesses could also then share the Holdings Co content on their sites.

Definitely complicates things and needs to be done with care to avoid shooting yourself in the foot but it can be done.

Account Closed · Answer

@Tucket Long

To my understanding, separate websites are always a better option to manage for SEO purposes too. The idea is not to have one generic website, instead, have 2-3 separate and target oriented websites. It should be easier to optimize for the right keywords and easier to track results for any PPC campaigns you might run.

Also, I understand that target oriented domain names are not available. You can also try getting something like we-buy-homes-ohio.com. This domain is available and such names are easier to get and google algorithm reads a-b-c.com as abc.com so it doesn't make any difference if you own abc.com or a-b-c.com as long as you have targeted the right keywords with rich content on them.

Single or separate websites for consumer sales and investing biz?

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