2 sites in one niche?
-
Hello,
Can you be penalized for having 2 ecommerce sites in the same niche? Is there a way to do it white-hat? Please explain.
-
Google will simply filter out duplicate content unless you do it really badly and then you would probably get a message in GWT saying that you had copied something. If you have multiple sites in the same niche and are genuinely contributing original and valuable content then I don't see an issue. If I'm not mistaken match.com and chemistry.com largely run dynamic content and do a good job of it too. Dynamic content (which makes sense) is the easiest way to go with this in terms of building maintainable sites going forward.
-
That's how we do it too Will. We rank the first site and then add the second. You'll learn a lot about the niche when you build out the first one.
You can also do it where you have a e-commerce site as your main site and a reviews/ratings of products for the other site. You can have the product reviewed on the second site and pull that data to your site for additional reviews (not just reviews about your site but about your site's products) Works well and you can generally rank the pages pretty fast.
-
The consensus seems to be that it is whitehat when the content on each website justifies having different websites, and it is blackhat when you go with duplicate content. I will play the devil's advocate and say that this tactic typically makes me nervous because it is an option that seems to appeal to companies that don't want to invest in really outstanding content in the first place. That doesn't apply to everyone (Match.com and Chemistry.com would be two good examples of doing it right), but I think it makes sense to really nail one website before launching a second, and then having a plan to really nail the second.
-
Definitely not. It's a great way to dominate SERPs in your niche. We have a range of lead generation websites which we use in this way. As long as the content is unique then there is great benefit.
-
In my experience, no. We purchased another company in our niche and have maintained the website that came with the company. The product lines overlap almost completely, and both sites rank very well. We write unique content for each site and change the names of overlapping product lines. We're not taking any pains to be sneaky -- our corporate address appears on both sites, there's some interlinking, and they're on the same C-block. If Google wants to punish companies that do this, they haven't bothered creating an algorithm for it. I'm not sure they'd want to punish this, however.
-
No penalty but you have to be careful with duplicate content. The issue with this is going to be branding. If you get a follower of Site A then they probably won't follow site B (it's possible but doubtful) I create "competition sites" all the time to compete with me. Unique content and making sure that you don't have the same product description for same products can be a hassle but well worth it. Branding is big though. Think about Chemistry.com and Match.com; both are owned by the same company (IAC) I think it's a great strategy and has worked well for us.
-
Of course not. But here I am assuming that you are not copy-pasting the same information in two sites.
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
-
Can I create a new Website to promote just one set of services from a list of several services?
Hi, I have a 10 years old website, where I promote all my services - around 30 of them under 5 main categories. For example, my current website promotes these services. A service - with a1, a2, a3 services B service - with b1, b2, b3 services C service - with c1, c2, c3 services D service - with d1, d2, d3 services E service - with e1, e2, e3 services Now I want to promote just "A service" with its sub-services into a separate website, as that service is in demand now and also those keywords should be my main keywords. I want to connect my old website with the new one, to increase the trust among users. Can I do this? I hope I am not violating any Google rules by doing this. Please help with suggestions. Thanks. Jessi.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Sudsat0 -
What is the best strategy to SEO Discontinued Products on Ecommerce Sites?
RebelsMarket.com is a marketplace for alternative fashion. We have hundreds of sellers who have listed thousands of products. Over 90% of the items do not generate any sales; and about 40% of the products have been on the website for over 3+ years. We want to cleanup the catalog and remove all the old listings that older than 2years that do not generate any sales. What is the best practice for removing thousands of listings an Ecommerce site? do we 404 these products and show similar items? Your help and thoughts is much appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | JimJ3 -
Should I 301 redirect my old site are just add a link to my new site
I used to offer design and web services on a site that is current blank (no content, no links). My questions is should I add a little bit of content, maybe a brief explanation with a link to my new site. Or should I just add 301 redirect. This is purely a question of what is better for SEO and ranking for my new site (not a branding question).
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Tyrell0 -
Whether to use new domain or old ecommerce site domain that has been incomplete for a long time.
Hello, We are starting a second store in our niche. Which of the following should I choose: A. We have a site from a year and a half ago that we put content on but never actually added products. The category and article content needs to be completely rewritten. We will completely rewrite the content to be much better and up to date. We're planning on adding products and rewriting the manufacturer descriptions. B. We could use a new domain that is closer to exact match for our main keyword. We'd just buy one for $15 I don't know whether A or B would be the fastest way to get the site going. I'm concerned that leaving a site half done for a year could cause an issue, but I really don't know. If you've got experience with this, please advise. Thank you.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Is one of my competitors trying to get my site penalized?
Hi guys, I have been ranking #2 for a popular search term for several months now, and today I noticed a drop to #5, so I went to check my backlink profile, and I'm seeing thousands of no-follow exact keyword matched backlinks, all from spammy looking websites. I looked at some of the links and they do link to me, but I didn't generate these links, and I have never paid anybody externally to build links for me. What is the best course of action for me here? link disavow tool?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | davegill0 -
Should I Do a Social Bookmarking Campaign and a Tier 2 Linking?
I don't see anything bad in manually creating links on different (about 50) social bookmarking services. Is this method labeled as White Hat? I was wondering if it would be fine to create Tier 2 linking (probably blog comments) for indexing of the social bookmarking links? Please share your thoughts on the topic.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | zorsto0 -
Should this site be punished?
Every summer for the past 4 years one of our customer's competitors suddenly has a big jump in Google's (.co.uk) rankings for some of the main industry phrases, particularly "air conditioning". We were always under the impression that they bought links before the busy summer season, as they have these strange massive jumps in the rankings. (for the rest of the year they often drop down) I recently checked out some of the back-links going to their site and noticed something I'd not seen before. Of the (approx) 480 links that showed up, around 80% of the SourceURL's ended with "?Action=Webring" (see 1st attached image). To me it doesn't look natural at all and I'm surprised that Google hasn't picked up on. Their site is www.aircon247.com. It had been mentioned to me that this may be to do with link sharing sites (which I assume is black-hat) but I'm not 100% sure that they are doing this. They also have an identical long spammy-looking footer at the bottom of every page which is clearly only for search engines to see. We reported it to Google a year ago but no action was taken. Do you think that it is acceptable to have it on every page? (see 2nd attached image) I would be interested to know your thoughts on both of these, and whether this would be a dangerous tactic to try and emulate? Gc5MU.png iXGA9.png
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | trickshotric0 -
Is it possible that since the Google Farmer's Update, that people practicing Google Bowling can negatively affect your site?
We have hundreds of random bad links that have been added to our sites across the board that nobody in our company paid for. Two of our domains have been penalized and three of our sites have pages that have been penalized. Our sites are established with quality content. One was built in 2007, the other in 2008. We pay writers to contribute quality and unique content. We just can't figure out a) Why the sites were pulled out of Google indexing suddenly after operating well for years b) Where the spike in links came from. Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | dahnyogaworks0