Architecture is the decision about what lives where. For a multi-location HVAC company it answers three questions: how many websites should we run, how should locations be organised inside them, and what happens to the domains we no longer need. Getting this right first prevents the most expensive mistake in multi-site marketing, which is building content into a structure you later tear down.
What the service is
It is a planning engagement that ends with a written structure document. That document lists every domain you own, every branch and service territory, and every brand or division, and assigns each one a role.
The roles are simple:
- Hub: the main site that carries the company's name and most of its content.
- Section: a branch, territory or service area that lives inside the hub, usually as a location page.
- Division site: a separate site for a business unit that truly stands on its own.
- Retired: a domain whose useful pages are redirected into the hub, then left to forward visitors.
Every assignment comes with a reason you can read in one sentence. If we can't write that sentence, the assignment is wrong.
Who it's for
This is for HVAC companies at a structural turning point. Typical situations we see:
- a company that grew from one shop to four and has a different website for each
- an owner who bought a competitor and kept both phone numbers, both sites and both Google profiles
- a group that runs a residential brand and a commercial brand under different names
- a company that bought dozens of exact-match city domains years ago and isn't sure what to do with them
That last case deserves a direct answer. Exact-match city domains that each carry a thin copy of your services fit Google's description of doorway abuse. The fix is almost always to redirect them to real location pages on the hub.
What's included
- Inventory. Every domain, subdomain, profile, phone number and branch, in one sheet.
- Evidence review. For each site: what it ranks for in Search Console, the calls it produces, its links and its reviews.
- Independence test for each brand and division (own name, own offer, own buyers, value on its own).
- Structure document with roles, URL patterns and the reasoning for each.
- Redirect map for every domain being retired, page by page.
- Internal linking plan inside the hub, so location pages are reachable from a clear menu rather than buried.
- Risk notes on anything that could look like a doorway or link scheme, with what to change.
Timeline
| Week | Work |
|---|---|
| 1 | Inventory and account access |
| 2 | Evidence review per domain and branch |
| 3 | Draft structure and redirect map, reviewed with you |
| 4 | Final document and handover, or straight into build |
Larger groups with many acquired brands can take longer, mostly because the facts take longer to gather.
How results are measured
Architecture is measured after it's built, not on paper. We track:
- total calls and booked jobs across the network, before and after
- calls per branch, so you can see whether consolidation helped or hurt any one location
- Search Console impressions for each branch page compared with its old standalone site
- redirect health: no broken chains, no pages lost
We don't promise ranking positions. What we can show is whether the structure produced more booked work per dollar than the one it replaced.
Mistakes to avoid
- Keeping a domain because it "might be worth something". If it has no real links, calls or branded searches, it's a maintenance cost, not an asset.
- Linking all your sites to each other from the footer. Google's spam policies list widely distributed footer links among link-spam patterns.
- Copying the same content onto two sites. One version competes with the other, and neither wins.
- Redirecting everything to the home page. Redirect each page to its closest match, or visitors land somewhere irrelevant.
- Deciding before measuring. The site the owner likes isn't always the one customers find.
The next steps after architecture are usually location pages and division sites. For the reasoning in depth, read one domain or many, and see pricing for costs.
Frequently asked questions
How long does an architecture plan take?
For a company with up to about ten locations and a handful of domains, expect two to four weeks. Most of that time goes into gathering facts from your branches and reviewing what each existing site actually ranks for.
Will retiring a domain lose the traffic it gets?
Not if it's done carefully. Each useful page is redirected to its closest equivalent on the main site, so visitors and most of the page's earned signals move with it. Pages with no useful equivalent are allowed to go.
What if our owners disagree about keeping a brand?
That is common after an acquisition. We put the evidence on one page: calls, reviews, branded searches and links for each brand. The decision stays yours, but it's made on numbers.
Do you need access to our accounts?
Read access to Google Search Console, Google Analytics and your Business Profiles helps a great deal. You keep ownership of every account; we work through user access you can remove at any time.