Can you have more than 1 site on the first page if site look and content is completely different but keywords are the sam.

[Roots7]

I have a client that wants to build another completely different site than his main site and optimize it to have 2 websites on the first page for his keywords. The content and look and feel of the website would be completely different. One of his competitors is doing it and getting away with it. What is your advice.

[EGOL]

Does Google know that we own both of them?

Google is a domain registrar and can probably see the registrants.  How much they use this is unknown.

[CMC-SD]

We acquired a site a couple years ago and now sell our product line on it as well as on our "mothership" site. They both rank on page 1 for many, many, many terms. Does Google know that we own both of them? They don't link to each other or mention each other, but it's not like we're being ultra sneaky -- same business address on the contact page, both on the same GA & GWT account, similar spammy link profile from a shady SEO we worked with last year, etc. If they know, we have to conclude that they don't care.

That said, we did not build a second site from scratch with the intent of filling up page 1, so I don't know how the results would compare.

[EGOL]

I really like this question...

I have two sites in a couple different niches and have had that situation for many years.   Based upon what I have seen I would answer this question in a lot of different ways depending upon my strength in the niche and other factors.

If I have the dominant site in the niche then I chuckle when I see my competitors building multiple sites to compete against me.   They can build all of the hotdog stands that they want.  I will enjoy it.  Their hotdog stand will probably not kick my ass.

Keep in mind that war between two websites is very different than a pack of dogs attacking a single dog.  War between dogs pits one dog against many and the one dog must fend off attacks on multiple fronts.   Really hard to do.

War between websites is like war between two battle ships.  The bigger, better gunned and better armored ship has an enormous advantage.  So instead of building two ships armed with potato guns it is better to build one ship and put everything that you have into it.  Even that might not be enough.

War between websites is a little more complex because the bigger, better gunned and better armored ships get a "trust" or "authority" advantage that is absolutely enormous.

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Here is what I would tell clients.

If you are struggling to compete (meaning that you are not ranking in the top three positions for most of your important money terms then you should be putting everything that you got into building one site.

However, once you have a dominant position, then making a second site can be effective.  But if you do that it better be very different than your big site and you better not build it for the purpose of manufacturing links.

Adding more pages to a big, powerful site will allow those pages to rank higher in the SERPs than identical pages added to a hotdog stand site.  So, putting more work into a big site might be more effective.

So.... to get the most out of two sites you must not only have dominant position in the SERPs but you must also have already saturated the keyword terrain for everything that is important.

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One of his competitors is doing it and getting away with it.

If client told me this I would probably reply.... "THOSE FOOLS!"  lol

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** this is suspicion only **

I honestly believe that if google knows that you have two potent sites in the same niche.  And when they know that the second site gets a little throttling - meaning that it does not rank as well as deserved.

Anybody agree? Disagree?

[CMC-SD]

Then you're already capturing the majority of the clicks, and the additional work to create a new site and get it onto page 1 probably isn't worth it. I'd work on expanding their site to get more keyword variations and long-tail.

[Roots7]

i guess a better question is will he get penalized.

[Roots7]

the current site is already number 1,2 or 3.

[Roots7]

they are already number 1,2 o 3.

[SEOAndy]

It's possible but it's a lot of work and you would technically be competing against yourself. Just focus on getting a good website up and on the first page and in that top 3 position.

[Houses]

I would probably spend the time improving the main site instead.

The more sites you have, the more time you need to update them.

You can always use videos and images etc to show up on page 1 in more than one place.