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 websites vs each other owned by same company
-
My client owns a brand and came to me with two ecommerce websites. One website sells his specific brand product and the other sells general products in his niche (including his branded product).
Question is my client wants to rank each website for basically the same set of keywords.
We have two choices I'd like feedback on-
Choice 1 is to rank both websites for same keyword groupings so even if they are both on page 1 of the serps then they take up more real estate and share of voice. are there any negative possibilities here?
Choice 2 is to recommend a shift in the position of the general industry website to bring it further away from the industry niche by focusing on different keywords so they don't compete with each other in the serps.
I'm for choice 1, what about you?
-
I have came across similar situations before and I have to say that Choice 1 should be no problem at all as long as the content is fairly unique on each site. This should rule out the chance of duplicate content.
I guess it all depends on the volume, but for me I would go with choice 2. Simply because you then get to cover more spread and aren't stuck in one specific niche.
Truth is there is no right or wrong, both will work fine. It just depends on volume/competition
-
Thanks for the insight Patrick.
For many reasons the websites must remain separate, good suggestion though.
Rich
-
Hi there
I guess my main question is why two sites if you're trying to rank for the same set of keywords? Has he thought about combining? Moz has a great post on the potential benefit of combining two websites, but that's something you'll need to heavily research and chat with your client about. Here's that post.
If nothing else, more real estate sounds good to me so I would do option 1. Don't forget there are awesome Schema opportunities such as sameAs that can help you tie your properties together and help search engines understand your web presence. I would also make sure that you look into cross domain tracking so your client has a better understanding of his performance and eCommerce.
Hope this helps - good luck!
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
-
Absolute vs. Relative Canonical Links
Hi Moz Community, I have a client using relative links for their canonicals (vs. absolute) Google appears to be following this just fine, but bing, etc. are still sending organic traffic to the non-canonical links. It's a drupal setup. Anyone have advice? Should I recommend that all canonical links be absolute? They are strapped for resources, so this would be a PITA if it won't make a difference. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SimpleSearch1 -
Onsite SEO vs Offsite SEO
Hey I know the importance of both onsite & offsite, primarily with regard to outreach/content/social. One thing I am trying to determine at the moment, is how much do I invest in offsite. My current focus is to improve our onpage content on product pages, which is taking some time as we have a small team. But I also know our backlinks need to improve. I'm just struggling on where to spend my time. Finish the onsite stuff by section first, or try to do a bit of both onsite/offsite at the same time?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey1 -
Why my website disappears for the keywords ranked, then reappears and so on?
Hello to everyone. In the last 2 weeks my website emorroidi.imieirimedinaturali.it has a strange behavior in SERP: it disappears for the keywords ranked and then reappears, and so on. Here's the chronicle of the last days: 12/6: message in GWT: Improvement of the visibility of the website in search. 12/6 the website disappears for all the keywords ranked 16/6 the website reappears for all the keywords ranked with some keywords higher in ranking 18/6 the website disappears for all the keywords ranked 22/6 the website reappears for all the keywords ranked 24/6 the website disappears for all the keywords ranked... I can't explain this situation. Could it be a penalty? What Kind? Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | emarketer0 -
SEO Considerations for merging two brand website into one
Hello fellow Mozzers, We have two websites for two similar brands at my place of employment, the two brands currently serve slighly different products but could be held quite happily under one branded site. As part of a potential group merger into one sole brand, we will have to create one joined up website which will then feature all our products. The newly merged site will also have more scope to allow us to expand our product range where as currently one brand is kind of specific to a particular market due to its name. So as part of the Merge, I have to consider the potential implications for our search traffic, as this is an integral part of our business. Brand A - older, more authorative, great content, good organic positions - top 10 for pretty much all terms we favour. Brand B - younger, but has more marketing scope due to name, still good site and lots of content. Unfortunately Brand B has more in terms of potential lifespan, but is currently the less authorative of the two sites we run. it has lower DA and PR according to my Moz Analytics, a lower number of quality links and less content. In order to give the Brand B website the boost that is needed and in effect replace Brand A in the serps which has great organic positions, I need to make sure all bases are ticked for an action plan. So far this is what I have. Transfer all exisiting Brand A web pages to Brand B website. Rel canonical all Brand A pages to now point to Brand B websites new pages. 301 redirect all pages on Brand A to Brand B during the transfer. Once 301 redirects are in place then request external sites to actually repoint to Brand B website for any links. Update xml Sitemaps Update any content that mentions Brand B to now be Brand A. resubmit sitemaps to Webmaster tools Update all social profiles Update all local search profiles and listings Update all review sites with new brand name / merge any with both brands On a supplementary note for customer information, looking to also keep the older Brand A Home page up for a short time to help people understand the transition rather than a complete redirect which to our demographic could confuse and alienate people. Will also look to send a mass email to roughly 400K people informing them of the move abd how it affects them. I have no doubt there will be some glaringly obvious additions, any further advice would be much appreciated. Hope you are all well. Tim
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TimHolmes1 -
Website completely delisted - reasons?
Hi, I got a request from a potential client as he do not understand why his website cannot be found on Google. I've checked that and found out that the complete website is not listed (complete delist) at all - expect just one pdf file.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheHecksler
I've checked his robots.txt - but this is ok. I've checked the META Robots - but they are on index,follow ... ok so far. I've checked his backlinks but could not found any massive linking from bad pages - just 6 backlinks and only four of them from designdomains.com which looks like a linklist or so. I've requested access to their GWT account if available in hope to find more infos, but does anyone of you may have a quick idea what els it could be? What could be the issue? I think that they got delisted due to any bad reason ... Let me know your Ideas 🙂 THANX 🙂 Sebi0 -
Microsites: Subdomain vs own domains
I am working on a travel site about a specific region, which includes information about lots of different topics, such as weddings, surfing etc. I was wondering whether its a good idea to register domains for each topic since it would enable me to build backlinks. I would basically keep the design more or less the same and implement a nofollow navigation bar to each microsite. e.g.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kinimod
weddingsbarcelona.com
surfingbarcelona.com or should I rather go with one domain and subfolders: barcelona.com/weddings
barcelona.com/surfing I guess the second option is how I would usually do it but I just wanted to see what are the pros/cons of both options. Many thanks!0 -
Site wide footer links vs. single link for websites we design
I’ve been running a web design business for the past 5 years, 90% or more of the websites we build have a “web design by” link in the footer which links back to us using just our brand name or the full “web design by brand name” anchor text. I’m fully aware that site-wide footer links arent doing me much good in terms of SEO, but what Im curious to know is could they be hurting me? More specifically I’m wondering if I should do anything about the existing links or change my ways for all new projects, currently we’re still rolling them out with the site-wide footer links. I know that all other things being equal (1 link from 10 domains > 10 links from 1 domain) but is (1 link from 10 domains > 100 links from 10 domains)? I’ve got a lot of branded anchor text, which balances out my exact match and partial match keyword anchors from other link building nicely. Another thing to consider is that we host many of our clients which means there are quite a few on the same server with a shared IP. Should I? 1.) Go back into as many of the sites as I can and remove the link from all pages except the home page or a decent PA sub page- keeping a single link from the domain. 2.) Leave all the old stuff alone but start using the single link method on new sites. 3.) Scratch the site credit and just insert an exact-match anchor link in the body of the home page and hide with with CSS like my top competitor seems to be doing quite successfully. (kidding of course.... but my competitor really is doing this.)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nbeske0 -
One Way Links vs Two Way Links
Hi, Was speaking to a client today and got asked how damaging two way links are. i.e. domaina.com links to domainb.com and domainb.com links back to domaina.com. I need a nice simple layman's explanation of if/how damaging they are compared to one way links. And please don't answer with you lose link juice as I have a job explaining link juice.... I am explaining things to a non techie! Thank you!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnW-UK0