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Should I create a second website to rank in another province, or expand my existing site?
Posted by on March 15, 2026 at 9:36 pmI’m looking for some SEO advice from people who have dealt with multi-location ranking.
I currently run a website that ranks pretty well for several keywords in one Canadian province. The site is fairly established and performs well locally.
Now I’m looking to target the same type of keywords in another province that’s quite far away geographically.
I’m debating between two approaches:
Option 1:
Create a completely separate website for the new province, set up a Google Business Profile there, and build the SEO for that site independently.
Option 2:
Keep everything on my existing domain and create new location/service pages targeting the new province (ex: /province-city-service pages).
My concern with option 2 is that the site might become diluted or confusing for Google if it’s trying to rank for two different provinces that are far apart.
But at the same time, building authority for a second domain obviously takes more time.
For people who have done multi-location SEO:
• Is it better to keep everything under one strong domain? • Or build separate domains for different regions/provinces? • Does Google care if a site targets two distant regions?Would love to hear what has worked best in real situations.
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1 Reply
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Usually it’s better to keep everything under one domain if you can. Google tends to trust established sites more, so adding well-structured location pages often works better than starting a brand-new site from scratch. You just have to make sure each location page is clearly focused on that area, with unique content and local signals like addresses, reviews, or Google Business listings.
Separate domains can work, but you’re basically starting over with authority and backlinks, which is a lot slower. Targeting multiple regions on one site won’t confuse Google as long as each page is clearly optimized for its specific city or province.
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So then you’ll have two websites with very little authority. Start getting backlinks with your keywords in there as anchor text.
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If the services are the same, I’d keep it on the same domain and build out proper location pages. Starting a second site means rebuilding authority from zero, which usually takes way longer than people expect.
The bigger factor I’ve seen is whether you actually have signals in that province, like addresses, local links, or a GBP. Without that, either approach struggles.
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Do you have a location in that other province? If not, you can’t just create a GPB there. Google upped its verification process these last few years making it almost impossible to get a GPB without a legit address.
Otherwise, why not do both? Create location pages on your existing website. In the mean time, launch an EMD for the other province and see which one performs better.
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i’d usually keep it on the same domain and build proper province and city pages, splitting into a second site just doubles the authority work for your team. the bigger question is whether you actually have local signals in that province, address, gbp, reviews, etc, otherwise ranking there can be slow
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