Client has 2 websites... won't do away with old site.
-
Ok my situation is: We have built a new site for a client and they would like to keep both sites working. Should I just attempt to optimize both sites to rank well in their area? Or should I be suggesting a 301 redirect from the old domain to the new? Other options?
Thanks in advance
-
My husband has two real estate sites. My plan, when I made the new one was to take the old one down. But for some reason it mysteriously ranks well for several terms and continues to bring us business.
With that being said, if there is duplicate content across the two sites then one is going to suffer.
If the old site is ranking well, it may be ok to keep it. But, it will be a challenge to optimize both sites. It's much better to work on one site. In most cases, I would redirect the old to the new site. The only reason I would personally keep the old one is if it was ranking well already for them.
-
Google isn't a fan of duplication. I've been watching more and more companies who had multiple sites realize it's going to bite them, and they have been merging (or, redirecting) into one.
I'd never advocate for two sites, mostly because of the same reasons others mentioned.
-
I think it comes down to whether you have the resources to keep both sites at the top of their games. Having two sites is pretty much twice the work of having one (see, I'm a maths genuis me!) if they are both to rank well. You "should" be able to grab a larger slice of the top ranking spots with two sites but it is hard work.
-
I had contemplated this a couple of years ago. We had an old site and just created a new one. The old site was performing well in the search results for popular keywords. We didn't want to risk losing any ranking doing a 301 redirect and we wanted to attempt having multiple listings on search results - so, we kept both!
We stopped updating the old site and let it coast then started working on SEO for the new site and eventually had two well performing sites on the SERPs.
And with google merging organic and place pages, you could use the new site as the URL for a place page if the company you are working with is a local business. So you'll have a organic listing and place listing.
I thought I would share my experience with you to consider what is possible with keeping both sites. However, there is nothing wrong with 301 redirecting to the new site.
-
Good question
It's a new site with new content... I believe their thinking is "2 sites is better than 1". I'm going to continue to fight the uphill climb and get them to ditch the old one.
-
Why do they want to keep it? Implementing 301 redirects is essential and is the best-practice as you want to have only unique content out there.
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
-
Two Day After Starting Moz Pro campaign i experienced Sudden Huge Traffic Drop and My site ranki Drops in my site..Please I need your help
Two Day After Starting Moz Pro campaign i experienced Sudden Huge Traffic Drop and Drops in my site..Please I need your help
On-Page Optimization | | zizutz0 -
I want to place reviews from a review site also on my client's website, what's the right way to do that?
My client is doing a good job fitting rooftops out with solar panels. his customers are happy and ready to show this in online reviews. He has a partnership with a review site that gives him new leads, but I just don't want him to lose this valuable reviews just to this one review site.. Here's what i came up with and I love to hear your opinion on this;
On-Page Optimization | | JoostDerks
I'll copy the content of the solarpanel review site, place it on my client's website in hreview. the contents canonical will be rightfully set to the review site, this way I want to avoid the duplicate content thing, but get the hard earned yellow stars in my client's SERPs. and show the visitors of my clien't s site what a great job he is doing, on his own website.. This is the first time I thought of this solution and I wonder if I'm forgetting something.. Is this solution safe with Google/Bing/Yahoo?0 -
Google picking up old pages
I recently redesigned a site that had all the keywords it was ranking for going to the home page. Now I have specific pages for each of these keywords but I'm seeing the home page (not the page that, if I do an on page optimization by hand in MOZ gives me an A rating) showing up in the auto reports (assuming pages Google sees for these keywords related to the url) as F's. They're all pointing to the home page. I've redirected the old index.html home page to the new but I suspect the reason is actually these pages (were) ranking for these terms (though none too well - all but one were not in the top 50 and one was 45) because these rankings are all dropping as well. I'm at a loss, with the site replaced, as to how to correct this and tell Google these keyword phrases all have their own pages now. I've dug through this forum and the only applicable answer I can see would be to add these phases to the home page (where they all rank for now) with anchored links to their new (A rated by Moz for these terms when I hand enter them) singular pages? Or is it just a waiting game?
On-Page Optimization | | adworksofboca0 -
Dropping Old Site After Too Many Penalties. What Do You Think About the New One?
I finally decided to drop my website after it kept losing traffic even though I spent hundreds of hours and lots of $$$ trying to recover from both Panda and Penguin. I should've started a new website a lot earlier. So here's my new website, let me know if it's worthy of Big G: http://www.webhostinghero.com/ Thank you in advance for your constructive comments!
On-Page Optimization | | sbrault740 -
Is Googlebot seeing text in my 'Read More' bar and could they even be penalising me for it?
Hi guys. Our web developers have put a read more bar that contains the on page SEO text for our webpage. By default, the read more bar is not expanded and you cannot see the text within. If you click 'Read More', the box expands and the text is shown on the page. I was wondering if googlebot is seeing this text at all - it's really important that it does because it contains all the on-page SEO text. I also wondered if this type of approach is still considered 'white hat'? If it's not, could google be penalising us for it? Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | CarlDarby0 -
New site not ranking for it's name
Performed on-page SEO for this new site that went live a couple of weeks ago - no link building or anything of that nature yet. http://maven-management.com I'm starting to see the site rank on Bing for some keyword phrases but it doesn't rank for the business name "Maven Management" on any major search engine. SEOMoz gives my on page optimization an A for the business name for the home page. Am I just being impatient? I didn't really put much effort into ranking for the business name because that generally seems to happen without any issue. There are other companies online with the same name. Any insight is appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | DenverKelly0 -
Panda Update and Website Content
According to the Panda Update information, website content that is or was written to help with SEO is now not the best idea, but content that is very informative and interesting is the way to go. But if you have an Ecommerce Website how can you write informative bookmarking content, if each product you sell is very similar, and the information for the product is just details about the product. Its hard to write good content for an eCommerce website. We have 300+ products that are all similar, but if we would write content about each product, it would be similar and not interesting to read. People just want to purchase the product, not read a bunch of content. How do websites that sell many products and not content driven websites rank well in search?
On-Page Optimization | | hfranz0 -
SEO for spanish website
Hi, A client has given us the site http://www.comtranslations.com/Home.html for optimization. He wants to optimize only the spanish part ( the link is on the top right ). By clicking on the link Espanol, the url opened is - http://www.comtranslations.com/Principal.html. He wants seo for this website for spanish keywords. The keywords are - Traducción
On-Page Optimization | | seoug_2005
Traductor
traducir español inglés
traducción My question is how do we go about this ? Shall we purchase a software that translates spanish to english ? Thanks0