2 clients. 2 websites. Same City. Both bankruptcy attorneys. How to make sure Google doesn't penalize...
-
Hi Moz'ers! I am creating 2 new websites for 2 different bankruptcy attorneys in the same city. I plan to use different templates BUT from the same template provider. I plan to host with the same hosting company (unless someone here advises me not to). The content will be custom, but similar, as they both practice bankruptcy law. They have different addresses, as they are different law firms.
My concern is that Google will penalize for duplicate content because they both practice the same area of law, in the same city, hosting the same, template maker the same, and both won't rank. What should I do to make sure that doesn't happen? Will it be enough that they have different business names, address, and phone numbers?
Thanks for any help!!
-
If you were planning to use these sites as linking sources for each other, then you would definitely want different hosts for their sites. It will increase the value of the links.
The most important thing is giving them each quality, unique content. If the content is considered duplicate by Google only one of the sites will rank. It is really the only thing that can separate two sites that are so similar, aside from diverse link profiles.
-
Good morning, BBuck!
Good questions, and as others have stated, the template and host really shouldn't be a concern. Just be sure you're not interlinking the sites in some unnatural way or duplicating content, image files, etc. Be sure you're keeping the citation building for each client in two completely separate 'baskets' (e.g. don't accidentally mix up details if you are building citations for both clients at once) and be sure you're writing unique descriptions on the citations. I would be very surprised if Google cared about the template or the host. You should be good to go, provided you treat each project as a separate effort in terms of content development and marketing. Hope this helps!
-
I dint see any problem with that! Using the same hosting company and a template hoster didn’t make much of the difference on rankings. Only thing you should make sure is that the content for both website shouldn’t be that much similar that I come under the thin content area.
Hope this helps!
-
No ethical issue. The first referred me to the second. I'm helping them both compete against the 15 other firms in the area. They both are fully aware that they both are working with me. The second actually referred me to a THIRD, but he won't be ready for several months. SO, I need to figure out how to juggle the 2, and if I can't do the 3rd (google penalty), then I will decline.
Just want to know what I need to do to make Google see that these are all separate firms, and not one firm gaming the system.
Thanks for your reply! Anyone else want to chime in?
Cheers! Have a great weekend! (i'm obviously working ;-(
-
Putting aside the ethical issues of having two clients in direct competition, Google cares far less about the template you use and more about the content and service that you provide. Both will be indexed. Don't duplicate anything that isn't technical in nature. There are hundreds of blogs that share the same templates, hosting platforms, etc. If one gets deindexed, talk to Google directly.
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
-
How to be above the product maker website
Hello, I am the exclusive reseller of a product in Switzerland. However, when I type the name of the product the maker of the product appears 1 st on google with its website instead of my website that ends in .ch ? I appear nowhere when I type the product name and my website has been online for more than 6 months. How can I make sure I appear 1 st above the maker of that product ? The only place I appear is in the right side with the adresse and phone number but I would like to appear in the search results (blue links). Thank you,
Local Website Optimization | | seoanalytics1 -
Subdomain vs. Separate Domain for SEO & Google AdWords
We have a client who carries 4 product lines from different manufacturers under a singular domain name (www.companyname.com), and last fall, one of their manufacturers indicated that they needed to move to separate out one of those product lines from the rest, so we redesigned and relaunched as two separate sites - www.companyname.com and www.companynameseparateproduct.com (a newly-purchased domain). Since that time, their manufacturer has reneged their requirement to separate the product lines, but the client has been running both sites separately since they launched at the beginning of December 2016. Since that time, they have cannibalized their content strategy (effective February 2017) and hacked apart their PPC budget from both sites (effective April 2017), and are upset that their organic and paid traffic has correspondingly dropped from the original domain, and that the new domain hasn't continued to grow at the rate they would like it to (we did warn them, and they made the decision to move forward with the changes anyway). This past week, they decided to hire an in-house marketing manager, who is insisting that we move the newer domain (www.companynameseparateproduct.com) to become a subdomain on their original site (separateproduct.companyname.com). Our team has argued that making this change back 6 months into the life of the new site will hurt their SEO (especially if we have to 301 redirect all of the old content back again, without any new content regularly being added), which was corroborated with this article. We'd also have to kill the separate AdWords account and quality score associated with the ads in that account to move them back. We're currently looking for any extra insight or literature that we might be able to find that helps explain this to the client better - even if it is a little technical. (We're also open to finding out if this method of thinking is incorrect if things have changed!)
Local Website Optimization | | mkbeesto0 -
Does having a host located in a different country than the location of the website/website's audience affects SEO?
For example if the website is example.ro and the hosting would be on Amazon Web Services. Thanks for your help!
Local Website Optimization | | IrinaIoana0 -
Moving from html to wordpress site - 301's
Hello, I recently took control of my website from a web designer. I have been reading as much as I can regards SEO etc to make long term improvements to my site. The site was a basic 4 page website for a local cleaning company. Consisting of a homepage, services page, testimonial and contact page. The site performed reasonably given it's lack of detail or SEO but probably only because the level of competition isn't great. I am in the process of rebuilding the site in wordpress and with SEO in mind I intend to have more than 1 page regards services. I have 301'd my services.html page to my number 1 keyword term to gain any little link juice that is available. Now to my questions... Should I be doing this with the other pages? Is it worth 301'ing my contact us page? Is there anything to be gained by doing so? Again should I 301 the index.html to the new homepage? Been reading about this and the issues relating to loops etc but cannot find a definite answer regards the need? Last scenario - lets say my testimonials.html page has some link juice would it be beneficial to 301 that to 1 of my new service pages to give that a kick start as opposed to making a less important page like another testimonials page more powerful? Hope this makes sense, I am a beginner just thinking out loud. Thanks
Local Website Optimization | | sfrediktru80 -
Multi-Country Multi-Language content website
Hi Community! I'm starting a website that is going to have content from various countries and in several languages. What is the best URL structure in this case? I was thinking of doing something like: english name of the plant, content in english, content for USA:
Local Website Optimization | | phiber
www.flowerpedia.com/flowers/red-roses spanish name of the plant, content in spanish, content for MX:
mx.flowerpedia.com/es/rosas/rosas-rojas english name of the plant, content in english, content for MX:
mx.flowerpedia.com/roses/red-roses
this content is not the same as flowerpedia/flowers/red-roses Content for Mexico would not exist in languages other than english and spanish. So for example:
mx.flowerpedia.com/jp/flowers/red-roses would not exist and it would redirect
to the english version:
mx.flowerpedia.com/flowers/red-roses What would be the best URL structure in this case?0 -
What to do with localised landing pages on listings website - Canonical question
Hi Run a pet listings website and we had tonnes of duplicate content that we have resolved. But not sure what to do with the localised landing pages. We have everything pointing back back to the main listings URL http://www.dogscatsandpets.co.uk/for-sale-stud-and-adoption/ but haven't pointed the URLs that show pets for specific towns and cities eg http://www.dogscatsandpets.co.uk/for-sale/dogs-and-puppies/in-city-of-london/ back to the main url. Obviously this is giving us duplicate content issues, but these pages do rank in local search and drive traffic into the site. So my question is should we canonicalise the local pages back to the main url and if we do will this mean our local landing pages will no longer rank? Is there any alternatives?
Local Website Optimization | | dogscatsandpets0 -
How slow can a website be, but still be ok for visitors and seo?
Hello to all, my site http://www.allspecialtybuildings.com is a barn construction site. Our visitors are usually local. I am worried about page speed. I have been using Google Page Insight, and Gtmetrix. Although I cannot figure out browser leveraging, I have a 79 / 93 google score and for gtmetrix 98/87 score. Load times vary between 2.13 secs to 2.54 secs What is acceptable? I want to make sure I get Google love for a decent page speed, but for me these times are great. Bad times are like 7 seconds and higher. I have thought about a CDN, yet I have read horror stories too. I have ZERO idea of how to use a CDN, or if I need it. I just want a fast site that is both user and Google speed friendly. So my question is, what is a slow speed for a website? Is under 3 seconds considered ok? or bad for seo? But any advice is greatly appreciated.
Local Website Optimization | | asbchris0 -
How to rank in Local Google Without physical address and phone number?
Can We Rank Well in Local Google without Physical address and Phone Number??? If Yes. How??
Local Website Optimization | | Dan_Brown10