Utilizing GBP with Existing Country-Level Domain & New EMD

[msaqiib]

Hi everyone,

I'm a new SEO working for a local business in Dubai. They previously had an SEO manage their website, but the domain targets the entire country, not just our city.

I've identified an exact-match domain (EMD) targeting our city and am considering building a new website on it. However, I'm unsure how to handle Google Business Profile (GBP). Currently, their GBP is linked to the existing country-level domain.

Can I utilize the existing GBP on the new EMD website, or is there a better approach?

 

[ElizabethRule]

You can link your GBP to any domain, but you might experience a shift in rankings if the EMD website doesn't rank for your target keywords. What this shift will look like depends on your category, location, and competition.

Are you planning on transferring the content over from the old site and redirecting the URLs? If so, there might be very little shift in GBP rankings as you are passing authority over from your old site to your new site, but again highly depends on your specific situation.

Overall, I don't typically recommend building a whole new site to take advantage of an EMD website for a specific city, it's rarely worth the hassle. If the current website is performing well, you can always create location pages to rank better in your specific city.

 

[msaqiib]

You can link your GBP to any domain, but you might experience a shift in rankings if the EMD website doesn't rank for your target keywords. What this shift will look like depends on your category, location, and competition.

Are you planning on transferring the content over from the old site and redirecting the URLs? If so, there might be very little shift in GBP rankings as you are passing authority over from your old site to your new site, but again highly depends on your specific situation.

Overall, I don't typically recommend building a whole new site to take advantage of an EMD website for a specific city, it's rarely worth the hassle. If the current website is performing well, you can always create location pages to rank better in your specific city.

Thanks, Elizabeth, truly appreciate your insights on EMDs and rankings.

I'm set on creating a new EMD website for Dubai due to seeing success with similar sites in our niche. While I've been working hard to improve our current site Desert Safari Dubai, it hasn't yielded results. Ranking well for "Desert Safari Dubai" in Dubai is crucial; my job depends on it.

Could you offer suggestions to improve our existing website's ranking?