Clone sites at new company
-
I just came in house to our company for SEO. We have one main site and 182 that are exact duplicates and almost exact clones of the main site.
It's no surprise that half of these clones are deindexed already. The meta tags are just the domain name URL. I want to add unique text on the home page to each site, fix the meta tags and switch them up so they aren't clones.
Other than a huge rewrite of the code for each site, I'm not sure what else to do to prevent the rest from getting deindexed.
Is there any way to prevent the rest from getting deindexed?
-
What about turning them into regional sites? A has inventory located in this state, B inventory only in that state, etc. So they are not exact clones.
-
Hi CFSSEO,
I'm going through some older Q&A questions and wondering how this project is going for you. Is there anything more we can do to help you convince management that 182 clones aren't in their best interest?
-
If I inherited these sites and didn't have a boss to answer to I would deindex all of them but one intentionally.
I would then redirect them all to the main site.
"and so they want to get something out of them now."
ha... I would allow them to expire and use the savings to buy beer. Savings is what you will get out of them IMO.
-
CFSSEO
It sounds as if someone in the past thought having multiple sites would improve things. There is no point in even redirecting these.
1. Keep your main site.
2. If one or two of the clones happen to have any PA, DA - from different links than you have on main, you should redirect those pages to the same page on the main site. (Highly likely they do not)
3. On the other sites, take them down. Save money and time on hosting, etc.
4. Teach those in your company it must be about content, etc. and quality links and focus like crazy on the one.
5. On the chance someone would later question this, I would do a screenshot on every one possible showing the traffic to the site over the last 6 months in GA. (This is to protect you).6. When the main site increases in traffic, etc. Demand a raise!!
Best
-
The main site has inventory, the clone sites also have the same inventory listings. I believe the hope was that with more clone sites, the inventory will get more traffic and more sales OMG! Of course, that hasn't happened, but time and money went into these domains and so they want to get something out of them now.
The sites provide value to the people listing their stuff for sale, and to the user who finds items to buy. The sites do not actually have any backlinks but all link to the main site.
I think the best to hope for would be for these clone sites to just count as more backlinks to the main site because they are not ranking anywhere on their own.
-
The main site has inventory, the clone sites also have the same inventory listings. I believe the hope was that with more clone sites, the inventory will get more traffic and more sales OMG! Of course, that hasn't happened, but time and money went into these domains and so they want to get something out of them now.
I think the best to hope for would be for these clone sites to just count as more backlinks to the main site because they are not ranking anywhere on their own.
-
I've got the same thoughts as Aran.
What are these 182 sites for? Why do they exist? What are they meant to achieve?
If these sites are deindexed, do they have any value? Do these sites get any traffic? Does the mainsite get any traffic via these sites (and is this traffic worth anything - does any of this traffic convert?
Do these sites have any inbound links?
If these sites provide no value, no links, no business etc then I would seriously question why you need them.
The effort required to get these sites up and running and delivering some value is almost certainly going to be better spent on your main site.
-
To what end do you want to use the other sites for?
Surely, its easier to optimise one site than hundreds?
Will rewriting the other sites benefit you and if so will the benefits outweight the amount of work required, or could that effort be applied elsewhere to beefit the main site?
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
-
Breaking up a site into multiple sites
Hi, I am working on plan to divide up mid-number DA website into multiple sites. So the current site's content will be divided up among these new sites. We can't share anything going forward because each site will be independent. The current homepage will change to just link out to the new sites and have minimal content. I am thinking the websites will take a hit in rankings but I don't know how much and how long the drop will last. I know if you redirect an entire domain to a new domain the impact is negligible but in this case I'm only redirecting parts of a site to a new domain. Say we rank #1 for "blue widget" on the current site. That page is going to be redirected to new site and new domain. How much of a drop can we expect? How hard will it be to rank for other new keywords say "purple widget" that we don't have now? How much link juice can i expect to pass from current website to new websites? Thank you in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | timdavis0 -
Old sitemaps after site migration.
Hi, I was wondering if it's safe to remove all the sitemaps from the old site in search console? It's been 3 months since site migration from http://sitea.com (301 redirected) to http://siteb.com. Therefore, can I delete the old sitemap from the http://sitea.com from search console? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ggpaul5620 -
Need references to a company that can transition our 1000 page website from Http to Https without breaking our SEO backlinks and site structure
Hi Ya'll I'm looking for a company or independent who can transition our website from http to https. I want to make sure they know what they're doing with a Wordpress website. More importantly, i want to make sure they don't break any seo juice from external sources while internally nothing gets broken. Anyone have any good recommendations? You can reply back or DM me. Best, Shawn
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Shawn1240 -
Sitelinks to Sister Companies
Hi We have a number of sister companies and link to them via a drop down in the footer - are these links as dangerous as anchor text links?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Merging Niche Site
I posted a question about this a while ago, but still haven't pulled the trigger. I have a main site (bobsclothing.com). I also have a EM niche site (i.e shirtsmall.com). It would be more efficient for me to merge these site, because: I would have to manage content, promos, etc. on a single site. In other words, I can focus efforts on 1 site. If I am writing content, I don't have to split the work. I don't have to worry about duplicate content. Right now, if I enter a product URL into copyscape, the other sites is returned for many products. What makes me apprehensive are: The niche site actually ranks for more keywords than the main site, although it has lower revenue. Slightly lower PA, and DA. Niche site ranks top 20 for a profitable keyword that has about 1300 exact match searches. If you include the longer tail versions of the keyword it would be more. If I merge these sites, and do proper 301s (product to product, category to category) how likely is it that main site will still rank for that keyword? Am I likely to end up with a site that has stronger DA? Am I better off keeping the niche site and just focusing content efforts on the few keywords that it can rank well for? I appreciate any advice. If someone has done this, please share your experience. TIA
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | inhouseseo0 -
SEO for New Web Site Launch
I am going to launch a new website with digital marketing included SEO, SMO, PPC, SEM, ORM services. Please anyone suggest me what would be marketing & brand promotion strategy for this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | afycon0 -
New links not showing in site explorer ?
I have built links to my site this past month that I know are live and in place and some do follow and some no follow ... Are the no follow links just not going to show up in my site explorer data ? And the others - why would they not be showing up yet ? SeoMoz updated thier link data aug 1st , my site has been crawled since then , but this new work I have done for link building have not shown up - None of them ? Its like I did not do any work ? how long could it take for them to show up and affect my site trust ect ? Also is there anything I vould be doing to speed the process up of having the new links found ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jlane90 -
What on-page/site optimization techniques can I utilize to improve this site (http://www.paradisus.com/)?
I use a Search Engine Spider Simulator to analyze the homepage and I think my client is using black hat tactics such as cloaking. Am I right? Any recommendations on to improve the top navigation under Resorts pull down. Each of the 6 resorts listed are all part of the Paradisus brand, but each resort has their own sub domain.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Melia0