Should each estate agency branch have its own website?

The short answer: one website, with a real page for each branch

The question comes up whenever an agency opens a second office or buys a rival. Local search forums have argued “one website or two websites” for businesses with two locations since at least 2012, and the advice there has settled on one strong site with a page per location. For an estate agency we agree, for three reasons.

Google’s rules point that way. Its spam policies describe several sites built to cover more towns as doorway abuse, as the next section sets out.
Links and reviews add up on one site. A local paper quoting your market view, a school you sponsor, a vendor sharing their sold home: on one website, all of it helps every branch page. Split across two sites, each gets half.
Two sites cost twice. Two builds or two licences, two property feeds, two sets of pages to keep current, and many providers in this market price per branch anyway, which our comparison of estate agent website companies tells you to ask about.

The exception is a second brand: an agency you have bought whose name still wins instructions, or a lettings business that trades under its own name. That is a business decision first and a website decision second, and we cover it below.

What Google’s rules say about running several websites

Google’s spam policies define doorway abuse as sites or pages “created to rank for specific, similar search queries”, and give examples that fit the branch website idea closely:

“Having multiple websites with slight variations to the URL and home page to maximize their reach for any specific query”;
“Having multiple domain names or pages targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page”;
“Creating substantially similar pages that are closer to search results than a clearly defined, browseable hierarchy”.

The same page lists, under scaled content abuse, “creating multiple sites with the intent of hiding the scaled nature of the content”, and under link spam, “excessive link exchanges” and “partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking”. A group of branch sites with the same listings feed, the same text with the town swapped and footers linking to each other matches those descriptions.

None of this forbids a second website. A separately branded agency with its own team, its own instructions and its own pages is a real business with a real site. What the policy catches is a second site whose purpose is a second place in the results.

The Business Profile rules lead the same way. Google asks for one profile per location, “a website that represents your individual business location”, and no URLs that “redirect or ‘refer’ users to landing pages”. A branch page on your main website meets that. So does a genuine second brand’s own site. A thin site set up only to give a profile something to link to does not help you.

What each branch page needs

If the branches share one website, each branch page has to stand on its own, because it is what that branch’s Google Business Profile links to and what a vendor lands on when they search near that office. The Negotiator’s 2019 feature on local search for multi branch agencies made the same point: putting every branch on one contact page is “a big mistake for SEO”, and branch pages “should not be identical”.

A good branch page carries:

the branch’s own address, phone number and opening hours, the same as on its Business Profile;
the people a vendor will actually meet, with photographs;
the homes that branch has sold and let, and the streets and villages it covers;
its reviews, if your review source can split them by branch;
a valuation booking that reaches that branch, not a central inbox.

How the profile, the reviews and the area pages fit together to rank in each town is in our guide to ranking on Google, so we will not repeat it here. One point specific to groups: Google’s Business Profile help allows profiles to be verified in bulk once a business has “10 or more locations”, which saves verifying each branch one at a time.

When a second website does make sense

An agency you have bought. Groups do both. Some keep the acquired name on the high street and the website because local vendors know it; others fold it in. When one group took over a three branch agency in 2022, The Negotiator reported that the old website redirected to a holding page telling customers they would now hear from the new brand. If you keep the brand, keep its website properly: its own listings, its own team and its own reviews. Google’s naming rules allow it, because locations that “consistently use a different name” on their shop front, website or stationery may use that name on their profile.

A lettings business with its own name. Landlords and vendors want different things, and some agencies run lettings as a separate brand. If it trades under its own name, a website of its own is reasonable. If it is the lettings side of the same branch under the same name, a lettings section of your main site does the job, and the Business Profile stays shared: Google’s guidelines give profiles of their own to public-facing departments that “operate as distinct entities”, each with a different name and its own category, which a lettings desk under the branch’s name is not.

Whatever the brand, the website must name the company. Under regulations 24 and 25 of the Company, Limited Liability Partnership and Business (Names and Trading Disclosures) Regulations 2015, every company must show on its websites its registered name, the part of the UK it is registered in, its registered number and its registered office. A trading name on the logo does not replace that. After a purchase, check which company now runs each brand and show that one on its site.

Folding an old website into yours without losing what it ranked for

If you decide to fold an acquired agency or a branch site into your main website, Google treats it as a site move: its guidance on site moves lists “merging multiple domains or hostnames” as one. The old domain will have earned links and rankings over years, and redirects carry them across. Google’s advice:

Map every old address to its new one. Google says “it’s important to map your old site’s URLs to the URLs for the new site”: the old branch page to the new branch page, area pages to area pages.
Do not send everything to the homepage. Google says not to redirect “many old URLs to one irrelevant single URL destination, such as the home page of the new site”, which “might be treated as a soft 404”. In our view a holding page has the same problem.
Use permanent redirects (Google names 301 and 308), and “keep the redirects for as long as possible, generally at least 1 year”. That means keeping the old domain registered and renewed.
Verify both sites in Search Console and use its change of address tool, which Google says is for moving “from one domain or subdomain to another”.
Expect a dip. Google warns of “ranking fluctuations” and says it can take “a few weeks or more” to show the new addresses.

On the same day, change the branch’s Business Profile name and website link to match the new brand, so the profile, the shop front and the website agree.

Where we fit

We build one bespoke website per agency, one agency per patch, with branch pages each Business Profile can link to. More branches, lettings as well as sales, or more systems to connect move a project up the range on our pricing page, and how we design estate agent websites sets out what goes into one.

Sources

More guides for agency owners are on the guides page.

Questions

Will two websites help an estate agency rank twice in Google?

Not as a tactic. Google's spam policies list multiple websites with slight variations, and multiple domain names targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page, as doorway abuse. Separate brands with genuinely different websites are a different matter, but a second site made to win more places in the results is what the policy describes.

Should a branch's Google Business Profile link to the homepage or the branch page?

The branch page. Google's guidelines ask for a website that represents your individual business location, and say not to use URLs that redirect or refer users to landing pages. A page on your main website with that branch's address, phone and team does that.

What happens to an acquired agency's rankings if we redirect its website to ours?

Google treats merging domains as a site move. If each old address is permanently redirected to its closest new page, Google says it can take a few weeks or more to show the new addresses, with some ranking fluctuation while it recrawls. Sending every old address to your homepage instead can be treated as a soft 404.

Can a lettings department have its own Google Business Profile?

Only if it operates as a distinct entity. Google's guidelines say public-facing departments that operate as distinct entities should have their own profile, with a name different from the main business and its own most representative category. A lettings desk in the sales office, under the same name, shares the branch's profile.

What does a company have to show on each website it runs?

Its registered name, the part of the UK where it is registered, its registered number and its registered office address, under regulations 24 and 25 of the Company, Limited Liability Partnership and Business (Names and Trading Disclosures) Regulations 2015. That applies to every website, so each brand's site must name the company that actually runs that business.

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Should each branch have its own website?