Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Best way to merge 2 ecommerce sites
-
Our Client owns two ecommerce websites.
Website A sells 20 related brands. Website has improving search rank, but not normally on the second to fourth page of google.
Website B was purchased from a competitor. It has 1 brand (also sold on site A). Search results are normally high on the first page of google.
Client wants to consider merging the two sites. We are looking at options.
Option 1: Do nothing, site B dominates it’s brand, but this will not do anything to boost site A.
Option 2: keep both sites running, but put lots of canonical tags on site B pointing to site A
Option 3: close down site B and make a lot of 301 redirects to site A
Option 4: ???
Any thoughts on this would be great. We want to do this in a way that boosts site A as much as possible without losing sales on the one brand that site B sells.
-
I work on a big ecommerce client which purchased another ecommerce website, the strategy they eneded up going with was running both websites still as they had such a good name in the market and both had decent ranks. (Option 1)
We can also aim for SERP domination on specific keywords, yet I understand the clients request to take one site down.
I think if you implement cross site 301's and move content to the main site it is evident that their will be a loss in rankings seen. (options 3)
-
I will try and provide some useful information as a follow up.
Sales on site B are slowly dieing. The brand that this web site sells is no longer in business. It has great rankings mainly because no one is competing for this brand and it specializes in that brand. It has a good link profile from other site pointing to it as a place to get the brand it sells (as they are now hard to find).
Site A is the site that has the longer term potential an is trying to be built up.
If a merger can only help site A sell the brand of site B, then there is no reason to do it. The desire is to boost the overall rankings for site A.
-
In my opinion, any answers given without knowledge of sales and profit data are dangerous.
Also, relative strength of the sites and their competitive markets should be considered.
If either of these are important sites that support a business someone who really knows what tehy are doing should be studying the options - which are greater in number than 3 or 4.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Ecommerce Site - Duplicate product descriptions & SKU pages
Hi I have a couple of questions regarding the best way to optimise SKU pages on a large ecommerce site. At the moment we have 2 landing pages per product - one is the primary landing page with no SKU, the other includes the SKU in the URL so our sales people & customers can find it when using the search facility on the site. The SKU landing page has a canonical pointing to the primary page as they're duplicates. Is this the best way? Or is it better to have the one page with the SKU in the URL? Also, we have loads of products with the very similar product descriptions, I am working on trying to include a unique paragraph or few sentences on these to improve the content - how dangerous is the duplicate content within your own site? I know its best to have totally unique content, but it won't be possible on a site with thousands of products and a small team. At the moment I am trying to prioritise the products to update. Thank you 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
On 1 of our sites we have our Company name in the H1 on our other site we have the page title in our H1 - does anyone have any advise about the best information to have in the H1, H2 and Page Tile
We have 2 sites that have been set up slightly differently. On 1 site we have the Company name in the H1 and the product name in the page title and H2. On the other site we have the Product name in the H1 and no H2. Does anyone have any advise about the best information to have in the H1 and H2
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CostumeD0 -
Merging Niche Site
I posted a question about this a while ago, but still haven't pulled the trigger. I have a main site (bobsclothing.com). I also have a EM niche site (i.e shirtsmall.com). It would be more efficient for me to merge these site, because: I would have to manage content, promos, etc. on a single site. In other words, I can focus efforts on 1 site. If I am writing content, I don't have to split the work. I don't have to worry about duplicate content. Right now, if I enter a product URL into copyscape, the other sites is returned for many products. What makes me apprehensive are: The niche site actually ranks for more keywords than the main site, although it has lower revenue. Slightly lower PA, and DA. Niche site ranks top 20 for a profitable keyword that has about 1300 exact match searches. If you include the longer tail versions of the keyword it would be more. If I merge these sites, and do proper 301s (product to product, category to category) how likely is it that main site will still rank for that keyword? Am I likely to end up with a site that has stronger DA? Am I better off keeping the niche site and just focusing content efforts on the few keywords that it can rank well for? I appreciate any advice. If someone has done this, please share your experience. TIA
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | inhouseseo0 -
Ecommerce Site homepage , Is it okay to have Links as H2 Tags as that is relevant to the page ?
Hi All, I have a Rental site and I am bit confused with how best do my H Tags on my homepage I know the H1 is the most important, Then H2 Tags and so on.. and that these tags should really be titles for content. However, I have a few categories (links) on my homepage so I am wondering if I could put these as H2 Tags given that it is relevant to the page . H3 Tags will my News and Guides etc , H4 Tags will the whats on the footer. I am attached a made up screenshot of what I propose for my homepage if someone could please give it a quick look , it would be very much appreciated. I have looked at what some competitors do a lot of them don't seem to have h2's etc but I know it's an important factor for rankings etc. Many thanks Pete dJSFQwI
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
Best way to block a sub-domain from being indexed
Hello, The search engines have indexed a sub-domain I did not want indexed its on old.domain.com and dev.domain.com - I was going to password them but is there a best practice way to block them. My main domain default robots.txt says :- Sitemap: http://www.domain.com/sitemap.xml global User-agent: *
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnW-UK
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/
Disallow: /wp-content/plugins/
Disallow: /wp-content/cache/
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/
Disallow: /trackback/
Disallow: /feed/
Disallow: /comments/
Disallow: /category//
Disallow: */trackback/
Disallow: */feed/
Disallow: /comments/
Disallow: /?0 -
Whats the best way to remove search indexed pages on magento?
A new client ( aqmp.com.br/ )call me yestarday and she told me since they moved on magento they droped down more than US$ 20.000 in sales revenue ( monthly)... I´ve just checked the webmaster tool and I´ve just discovered the number of crawled pages went from 3.260 to 75.000 since magento started... magento is creating lots of pages with queries like search and filters. Example: http://aqmp.com.br/acessorios/lencos.html http://aqmp.com.br/acessorios/lencos.html?mode=grid http://aqmp.com.br/acessorios/lencos.html?dir=desc&order=name Add a instruction on robots.txt is the best way to remove unnecessary pages of the search engine?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SeoMartin10 -
E-commerce site, one product multiple categories best practice
Hi there, We have an e-commerce shopping site with over 8000 products and over 100 categories. Some sub categories belong to multiple categories - for example, A Christmas trees can be under "Gardening > Plants > Trees" and under "Gifts > Holidays > Christmas > Trees" The product itself (example: Scandinavian Xmas Tree) can naturally belong to both these categories as well. Naturally these two (or more) categories have different breadcrumbs, different navigation bars, etc. From an SEO point of view, to avoid duplicate content issues, I see the following options: Use the same URL and change the content of the page (breadcrumbs and menus) based on the referral path. Kind of cloaking. Use the same URL and display only one "main" version of breadcrumbs and menus. Possibly add the other "not main" categories as links to the category / product page. Use a different URL based on where we came from and do nothing (will create essentially the same content on different urls except breadcrumbs and menus - there's a possibiliy to change the category text and page title as well) Use a different URL based on where we came from with different menus and breadcrumbs and use rel=canonical that points to the "main" category / product pages This is a very interesting issue and I would love to hear what you guys think as we are finalizing plans for a new website and would like to get the most out of it. Thank you all!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | arikbar0 -
Splitting a Site into Two Sites for SEO Purposes
I have a client that owns a business that really could be easily divided into two separate business in terms of SEO. Right now his web site covers both divisions of his business. He gets about 5500 visitors a month. The majority go to one part of his business and around 600 each month go to the other. So about 11% I'm considering breaking off this 11% and putting it on an entirely different domain name. I think I could rank better for this 11%. The site would only be SEO'd for this particular division of the company. The keywords would not be in competition with each other. I would of course link the two web sites and watch that I don't run into any duplicate content issues. I worry about placing the redirects from the pages that I remove to the new pages. I know Google is not a fan of redirects. Then I also worry about the eventual drop in traffic to the main site now. How big of a factor is traffic in rankings? Other challenges include that the business services 4 major metropolitan areas. Would you do this? Have you done this? How did it work? Any suggestions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MSWD0