Parent Company vs. Business Divisions/Subsidiaries: Separate Domains?

I’ve been working on a real estate rental property website and the client asked about the advantages and disadvantages of two approaches. There’s a nationwide “parent” company, but it owns rental properties in cookie-cutter “communities” all over the country.

Option 1: All content would be under the same domain name.

  • ParentCompany.com
  • ParentCompany.com/Property1
  • ParentCompany.com/Property2

Option 2: Each community has their own site.

  • ParentCompany.com
  • Property1.com
  • Property2.com

 

Here’s the fun answer: Pursuing both options would be best, but it will take a lot more resources to do it right.

Nationwide property management groups often have their own corporate site (ParentCompany.com) with pages for the properties they manage (ParentCompany.com/Property1) as well as a website for each individual community (Property1.com).

If you pursue this strategy, the page on the parent company site should just be a quick landing page. The property site should have all the details (floor plans, amenities, etc). They would use the parent site to link out to each of the properties, and link all of those properties together as “sister communities.”

Ranking/advertising multiple sites will cost a lot more than a single site. These are mid-large sized corporations running businesses like these.