3 Ecommerce Stores All Under One Roof - Good idea? SEO Benefits? Concerns?
-
I run multiple ecommerce stores in one particular market. I've been considering merging them all together and using a Single sign-on and allowing users to swap between websites. Each site is unique in their own way and are already ranking well on their own. But the goal is to merge them altogether to create a better user-flow.
An example of what I'm trying to do is what Zurb.com does (http://zurb.com/apps). They have all of their different products but they're under different domains.
Another example is http://www.envato.com/sites and all of their brands to their sites.
Will this negatively impact SEO efforts across the board or will we eventually benefit from merging them. Also, is there a correct way to do this. For example; Should I make one site the "parent website" and then create sub-directories of the other websites and work on the DNS to point to the right locations.
I'm not the technical person on our team but I do lead the marketing and I can't find the right answer for this question.
-
Your welcome. Here's a little insight on the two shopping cart systems I mentioned. Note that both systems have added (and are promoting) the standard e-commerce hoopla of auto-generated product pages and the sort of stuff systems like BigCommerce do. But they do both also have the simpler option of just using the cart and checkout system and allowing you to put your Buy buttons anywhere you can reach.
I started trying to set up AmeriCommerce because it had the most features. But as I got in deeper, the complexity of the features and the poorly written technical documentation overwhelmed me and I gave up. If you have some brainy tech guys they can probably understand the documentation better than I could.
I then switched to UltraCart and have found it much easier to use. You can see the standard cart appearance on some example pages on their website. My cart at EasyDigging.com is pretty heavily customized. They will soon have a easily modified HTML/CSS based cart available. There documentation and tech support is pretty good.
-
Interesting concept with merging them with only the shopping carts. It may be safer to keep them separate since they're already ranking well on their own. I'll check out those vendors you suggested. Thanks for the feedback!
-
Thanks for the tip. I'm going to join in on a call next week. You're right, it's hard to find people dealing with the same issue and I'm reading both sides of the argument with no real answer.
-
Years ago I tried to do the same thing and Google Trashed all my sites.
So tread very carefully, use nofollows if you are going to link to them or interlink between them.
It is something not often done and very few will be able to give you a definitive answer.
One thing is for sure, people on Google help forum do not understand owners of multiple businesses and will tell you to merge them under one site. Or question why you own more than one site and how you are able to successfully mange them at the same time rather than give you an answer of which they also do not have the answer for.
My best suggestion is to ask John Mueller from Google in a hangout he will give you the best answer, view upcoming dates here https://sites.google.com/site/webmasterhelpforum/en/office-hours
-
Sam wrote: "Each site is unique in their own way and are already ranking well on their own."
Another possibility is to leave the sites where they are (since they already rank well) but let them all share one single Shopping Cart / Checkout system. I know of a few e-commerce system that allow this. UltraCart and AmeriCommerce are two. You can put the "Buy Now" and "View Cart" buttons on any site and some social media sites (you don't even have to own the sites, which opens interesting possibilities for guest blogging with a shopping capability)
Then you could just re-style the three sites appearance so that they blend well together yet stay distinct. Like three old neighboring houses that were all built in the same era. And freely offer navigation between all three so it pretty much acts like one big website. Maybe put a logo in the header of page saying something like "Part of the Gizmo Group of fine stores". Many people would barely notice that they are moving from one domain to another.
The upside would be safety. If one of the three sites gets a penalty, the other two can continue to pull in customers while you repair the penalized site.
Just tossing around ideas. I've considered doing this with some unused domains we own. Hope it helps you...
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
-
Does a similar CMS fabric/theme used by 2 colleagues, cause SEO issues?
Does using the same CMS fabric/theme with substantially different content for each website but the same business address (on google places and the websites) cause SEO issues? For example: 2 colleagues with somewhat similar services located at the same business addresses desire to use the same CMS fabric /theme but will have different content on the sites. Will this hurt their SEO / should they use a different website skin/theme?
Web Design | | toti5880 -
Has anyone ever tested to see if having an ads.txt file provided any SEO lift?
I know that the ads.txt system is designed to prevent ad fraud and technically has nothing to do with search. That said, the presence of such a file would seem to be an indicator of overall site quality because it would show that a site owner wants to participate in a fraud-free system. Has anyone ever tested that? If so, they don't seem to have published their results. Maybe it's a secret weapon that some pros are using and not sharing?
Web Design | | scodtt0 -
SEO Problem With My Pages ?
Hi everyone, I created a self-hosted custom PHP website the page is ( custom cosmetic boxes ), but it doesn't show up on Google. I tried to follow tutorials on the HubSpot, but even my site sucks. Please help me where I am wrong. Maybe the little thing is left unattended, which makes it void.
Web Design | | fbowable
Please help me.0 -
SEO Tips for Affiliate Website
Hi all , I would just like to have an expert Opinion on SEO for Affiliate Website . Basically if I list all Third party products (Amazon/Affilate Window etc ) on my website and then the customer will be redirected to the Affiliates website to make a Purchase will there be an issue with SEO (Lots of Outgoing Url's) and Will the website not rank for Important keywords or will it be hit by any penalty ? I heard it's not good for SEO , any work around this ? If this is case How come cashback Sites rank well with no issues , although the concept is basically the same ? Any Tips or Advice appreciated as how to get this done safe . My Preferred Option would be with Magento Shopping Cart or second option would be with Wordpress Cart only in case this provides some SEO benefits over Magento by some plugins .
Web Design | | Aus0070 -
Too Many Links on One Page - What to Do?!
Hello Geniuses, Prodigies, and Experts of the Field, My website pages for www.1099pro.com have too many links on one page, something like 150-175, and I understand that each page should ideally be under 100. Most of these links, approx 105, come from dropdown navigation options in the header toolbar or the footer links. It is my take that these links make our site easier to navigate but I'm sure that they are hurting my pagerank / SERPs. Is there a best way to handle a situation like this? I'd really prefer not to alter the header/footer layout of the entire site by removing 50-75 navigational links. The only other idea I have is below but I have no idea if it would work. For any link that I do not care to pass pagerank, institute a "nofollow" parameter. This would be my favorite option if it is viable.
Web Design | | Stew2220 -
How to optimize SEO value of links in a calendar
Hi All- I am building a website about outdoor activities (cycling, kayaking, hiking, etc.). The site will most likely be built with either Joomla or Wordpress. A key piece of the site will be a calendar of upcoming events. The calendar will list the basic attributes of each event like date, time and location. However if an event has a webpage of it's own I will also include a link to that page in the details of the event. My question is: How can I create a calendar that will capitalize on the SEO value of the links included in the event descriptions? I've noticed many similar sites put events into a Google calendar and then embed the Google calendar into their webpage. In that situation would Google even see any external links included in the descriptions of the events? Thanks in advance for any input. -Chris
Web Design | | 1968Rouleur0 -
Does redesigning a website affects SEO results
We have a website and we are getting good traffic to it. Its a travel related domain registered many years back. Now its ranking high for most of the potential keywords even if it is not at all SEO friendly (Domain is an exact match keyword). We are planning to redesign it. Will that affect the SEO Ranking? We need to ask some more doubts: 1. When redesigning we are planning to change the inner page URL. So it it wise to redirect (301) old URL to the new URL? Old url will not be there after redesigning. But its currently having page ranks. 2. Can we redirect more than one old url to a single new page? 3. Google new updates said "they will be going to diminish the exact match results domains". Does that updates affects us? 4. Any more suggestions for the redesigning?
Web Design | | jjv0 -
Hosting/design company that is both cheap and has a nice partner package. Any ideas?
I need to signon with a hosting/design company that is both cheap and has a nice partner package. Any ideas?
Web Design | | christinarule0