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.
Two Webstites Targeting the Same Keywords
-
If I aquire a website in the same industry targeting the same keywords. Should I merge them into one? I understand it's a bad idea to have multiple websites promoting the same thing, but i'd like to capture the customer base of a competing website.
What's everyone's thoughts?
A- Merge new to main website with 301's? will google like that?
B- Keep them separate? Will google like that?
C- Don't bother.
D- Toss the computer and get into Horticulture
-
Thanks Guys. Points well taken.
I considered merging simply because both sites sell basically the same products, so making each unique would be somewhat difficult. My site (A) is much larger, better optimized, ranks well and had much more content. Site B has many products but little content which I think is why it doesn't rank quite as well. I am concerned about how much work it will take to get B up to speed when the same amount of work into A would probably generate more revenue. Just wondered if putting the work into A, redirecting B to A might be the best game plan. But maybe not long term.
-
Another add on to Egol's post is the split of SEO resources. If you don't have the time to build the necessary online properties to rank both it may be an argument for focusing your efforts on one stronger site then splitting resources and having two "also-rans".
-
D is sounding pretty good right now...
You could go either way. Without knowing how much existing content, traffic and the age and authority of your existing site, I will share my recommendation based on the assumption it doesn't have much authority or traffic.
I would merge and put more effort into one site (option A). Focus on high quality, high value information for just one site. As important as content is, dividing your efforts between 2 sites chasing the same keywords would be tough. Combining your effort and time into one site would allow you to do a much better job. 1 + 1 = 3.
An exception to this recommendation is in the case that both have high authority and traffic, but different voices/ personalities. But even in this situation, you could merge and turn it into an a big event/ story of how you are getting bigger and bringing the two communities together in order to bring even more value to the table, etc. - this could help get you some extra publicity and traffic from the situation.
-
There is no sin to building or buying two toy stores on Main Street and there is no sin owning two websites that compete for the same keyword.
The problem arises when you use the same content or very similar content on these sites or when you decide to heavily interlink them.
I have two websites in the SERPs for lots of keywords. Those sites always have TOTALLY DIFFERENT content. Sometimes one is retail and one is informational. They have the same registrant (visible whois) and are both claimed in my Google Webmaster Tools.
If you acquire a new website. Don't take generic advice on what to do with these two domains. Merging them could be a mistake and running them separately could be a mistake.
You might be able do some SEO and design and flip an ugly, poorly optimized, poorly performing website into an asskicking producer. Spend time to assess the site and spend time studying its traffic in analytics.
You might make more money running them separately or merging them might make a lot more sense. I might merge sites that have content with little keyword duplication and with very little backlink duplication. For sites that have lots of overlap it might make sense (if one of them dominates the SERPs) to run them separately.
So, don't take generic advice and don't do this without detailed study.
Finally, know what you are buying, what comes with the deal, what doesn't and what links and content have been placed on this site just to make it look good for the sale but that will be yanked immediately after they have your money.
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 divisions, same parent company, identical websites
A client of mine has intentionally built two websites with identical content; both companies sell the same product, one via an 80 year old local brand, well known. The other division is a national brand, new, and working to expand. The old and new divisions cannot be marketed as a single company for legal reasons. My life would be simple if the rules for distinguishing between nation's could apply, but I only have city X, and The U.S. I understand there is no penalty for duplicate content per se but I need to say to Google, "if searcher is in city X, serve content X. If not, serve content U.S. Both sites have atrocious DA and from what GA tells me, the National content appears to have never been served in a SERP in 3 years. I've been asked to improve visibility for both sites.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kc_sunshines0 -
Replacing keywords by synonyms. Will it increase risk of google keyword stuffing penalization?
I have a page which is ranking already pretty well for a relative competitive keyword.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
Google also ranks us on first page for synonym of keyword we optimize the page for (even though synonym does not appear on our page). I am now considering to replace some occurences of the keyword in the page by different synonyms, in the hope that our ranking may further improve for these synonyms.
However I am concerned that google may penalize me for keyword stuffing if I am using a wide range of synonyms of one keyword on our page. My plan is only to replace some occurences of keyword with synonyms. I am a bit nerveous here since page is already ranking quite well in a competitive niche. Any thoughts?0 -
How to integrate two websites, post-merger?
One of my clients has just been bought by a much larger company and thus will be losing their website and brand name. My client's site has built up a lot of traffic and authority in its space, so we are very nervous about losing all of this after the sale has gone through. The purchasing company intends for my client's services to be represented on its own website, so I am wondering, from a technical standpoint, what the best way is of going ahead with this, since my client will continue to work with the new company and would like to keep us onboard. Should we doing an 80/20 analysis, recreate our most valuable pages (eg. 70%+ of traffic is to home page) on the new site, then 301 each of these pages individually to its equivalent on the new site, while retaining as much of the old pages' on-page content/structure as possible? One thing I am concerned about is the fact that a large chunk of traffic is from brand searches. Again, should we simply recreate the home page with a page title of e.g. "X company is now part of Y company" in order that we'll still rank highly for the old company's brand name? Any advice on how to go about this is much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | zakkyg0 -
How to target for misspelled Brand name searches
Hi to all the SEO experts here, I am working on SEO of my 4 months old website. For example, its 'abz.com'. We like the brand name 'abz' for the business and we are able to SEO well for keyword 'abz'. However, we would also like to target for the keyword 'abc'. There are 2 reasons for that: 'abc' is an actual word. So there is a possibility that our users may type 'abc' instead of 'abz' to reach us. For 'abc', the top result is 'abct.us', which is a site of adult in nature. Also our website doesn't feature at all in the results. This is hitting us hard in terms of or brand visibility. So the questions are: How to feature in results of keyword search of 'abc'? Will the following approach work: Buying an available domain 'abc.co.in', and use it to feature in 'abc' results and 301 redirect to 'abz.com' Having 'abc' in the page meta (title and description). This is hard for us, since we need to rethink our taglines and copyrights. 2. If we search for 'abz', Google says "Do you mean abc". Is there a way to not have this suggestion? It would helpful to have some more ideas for this problem.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | manasag0 -
Good or bad adding keywords in Pinterest description?
I added all keywords in description. Will this affect my website, Google takes this as negative way? I am not adding keywords on my own website, but adding keywords to third party website? https://www.pinterest.com/pin/304555993526970292/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bondhoward0 -
Importing Keyword Planner Data into Excel?
What is the most efficient way to import search volume information into excel? We have 130K keywords that we need search volume information for.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Merging two different domains - subdomain or subfolder?
My company has two sites on different domains. We are considering merging the sites into one and keeping only the dominant domain. The dominate site is already a sub-domain of a larger organization so the new sub-domain would be two levels deep. I realize this is a little abstract so below is an example Dominant company site: company.root-domain.com Secondary company site: other-root-domain.com When they merge, everything will be on company.root-domain.com. Should it be other.company.root-domain.com or company.root-domain.com/other Note: The other site has several hundred pages. Both sites have strong authority and link profiles. I want to maintain as much of the value on the other site as possible with the merge.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEI0 -
Zero visits from keyword in Google Analytics
The keyword "business engagement in outsourcing" shows 0 visits. I have a look at Seomoz post at - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/advanced-google-analytics. According to it, "If someone makes more than one visit to a site within the same "session" and each visit comes from a search but on different keywords, then both keywords will be included in the keywords report - the first with 0 visits and the second with 1 visit" In my GA report, i could only see 0 visit for the above keyword. Why is 1 visit not being shown ? On reading the blog, http://webanalysis.blogspot.com/2008/04/google-analytics-tips-and-tricks-why-do.html#axzz1UPqhMV7o i am more confused, as it says "Google Analytics, assigns the visitors activity to the first keyword " . which is NOT what seomoz suggests
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoug_20050