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.
Splitting a Site into Two Sites for SEO Purposes
-
I have a client that owns a business that really could be easily divided into two separate business in terms of SEO. Right now his web site covers both divisions of his business.
He gets about 5500 visitors a month. The majority go to one part of his business and around 600 each month go to the other. So about 11%
I'm considering breaking off this 11% and putting it on an entirely different domain name. I think I could rank better for this 11%. The site would only be SEO'd for this particular division of the company. The keywords would not be in competition with each other.
I would of course link the two web sites and watch that I don't run into any duplicate content issues.
I worry about placing the redirects from the pages that I remove to the new pages. I know Google is not a fan of redirects. Then I also worry about the eventual drop in traffic to the main site now. How big of a factor is traffic in rankings?
Other challenges include that the business services 4 major metropolitan areas.
Would you do this? Have you done this? How did it work?
Any suggestions?
-
I choose not to split it. With all that has changed in the SEO world I am glad I did not. The site has fared well thru all the changes and still ranks well for both divisions.
-
Interested to know if you ended up doing this and how it has worked out.
Thanks! - topic:timeago_earlier,4 years
-
I agree that there is no right answer. I too worry that by splitting it that I would be loosing a lot of the back linking work for that division. Thereby causing the site to drop in rankings. It does TERRIFIC for the other division, which is the biggest part of their business. I really hate to mess that part up on an experiment like this.
I'm still 50-50. I would love to hear from someone that has done this and hear details about what they experienced.
-
I don't think there's a "right" answer here, but my observation is that microsites aren't doing as well as they once did. It used to be that, just by having more sites, you did better. Now, as Google seems to be testing the volume know on exact-match domains, devalues cross-linking, and is harsher on duplicate and thin content, it's a lot harder to support separate sites. Factor in that you're splitting your links, social signals and offline marketing/branding, and promoting two properties can really make you lose focus.
That's not to say it's all-or-none, though. Exact- and partial-match domains do still carry weight, and if the niche is unique and separable enough, it is possible to build a strong identity for it. I'd really look at the business side, though, for guidance. Is this a division of the business that really stands alone as a brand? If so, separation could provide broader benefit. If you're just separating for SEO, I'd generally side with keeping the unified site.
The issue with the redirects is that the weight of those pages only gets to exist in one place. So, if some of those pages have inbound links, a 301-redirect will kick start the new domain, but it will also take away from the authority of the old domain. In other words, you may not just lose the traffic itself - you may lose some of the main domain's ranking ability. That depends a LOT on the situation, though (it's hard to speak in generalities).
-
Slippery slope......Short term it is always better to stay focused. Old saying goes "what you focus on you find". One site and consolidating all the value is always the best short term policy.
Long term, if you continue to build SEO value and the sites are truly different, then you are better off with 2 sites. Here is why:
The same principle applies to the strategy of creating smaller well defined adgroups in adwords to increase your relevance and quality score.... You will create a higher relevancy for those keywords if you separate the site. The problem with this strategy is when you separate the site, you will lose some seo value for both sites.....the way to counteract that is you could pass "linkjuice" back and forth to the sites based on what they needed. But if you have a solid strategy and are working hard at SEO, thats like "mental masturbation" (can i say that?)
Several times we took 1 site and created 2-3 sites. SEO values go down temporarily but we counteracted this by developing a bunch of new relevant content, hyperfocused on the specific sites, and when we eventually got the site reindexed, we were already in better shape than when we started. More importantly, similar to your situation, one of the sites had less competition for several keywords and we started to dominate in that category.
Other assorted stuff:
4 metropolitan areas is not an issue. In some ways it is a plus as it gives you 4 geotargeting opportunities to differentiate yourself from your competitors.
redirects are here to stay. As long as google understands why you are redirecting then you are ok.
Hope this helps. Make it happen.
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
-
Local SEO - two businesses at same address - best course of action?
Hi Mozzers - I'm working with 2 businesses at the moment, at the same address - the only difference between the two is the phone number. I could ask to split the business addresses apart, so that NAP(name, address, phone number) is different for each businesses (only the postcode will be the same). Or simply carry on at the moment, with the N and Ps different, yet with the As the same - the same addresses for both businesses. I've never experienced this issue before, so I'd value your input. Many thanks, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Apr 25, 2016, 8:26 AM | McTaggart0 -
Splitting and moving site to two domains - How to redirect
I have a client who is going to split their retail and wholesale business and rebrand the retail biz. So let’s say they are going to move everything from currentdomain.com to either retaildomain.com or wholesaledomain.com. The most important business for them is the retail site, so they want to pass on as much ranking power as they can from currentdomain.com to retaildomain.com. I see two choices here: We can 301 redirect all of currentdomain.com to retaildomain.com, and then redirect any wholesale pages to wholesaledomain.com. The advantage is that we can use GSC’s change of address tool to report the change to Google. The downside is that there is a redirect chain (2 hops) to wholesaledomain.com. Would this confuse Google? Or we can 301 redirect page by page from currentdomain.com to the appropriate page on either new site. This means no redirect chains but it also means that we can’t use GSC’s change of address tool. Which would you do and why? And is there another option that I'm missing? I appreciate any insights you can share.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Dec 22, 2015, 4:24 PM | rich.owings1 -
My site shows 503 error to Google bot, but can see the site fine. Not indexing in Google. Help
Hi, This site is not indexed on Google at all. http://www.thethreehorseshoespub.co.uk Looking into it, it seems to be giving a 503 error to the google bot. I can see the site I have checked source code Checked robots Did have a sitemap param. but removed it for testing GWMT is showing 'unreachable' if I submit a site map or fetch Any ideas on how to remove this error? Many thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Nov 23, 2015, 1:10 PM | SolveWebMedia0 -
Should you delete old blog posts for SEO purposes?
Hey all, When I run crawl diagnostics I get around 500 medium-priority issues. The majority of these (95%) come from issues with blog pages (duplicate titles, missing meta desc, etc.). Many of these pages are posts listing contest winners and/or generic announcements (like, "we'll be out of the office tomorrow"). I have gone through and started to fix these, but as I was doing so I had the thought: what is the point of updating pages that are completely worthless to new members (like a page listing winners in 2011, in which case I just slap a date into the title)? My question is: Should I just bite the bullet and fix all of these or should delete the ones that are no longer relevant? Thanks in advance, Roman
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Aug 19, 2016, 3:37 PM | Dynata_panel_marketing1 -
Does it hurt your SEO to have an inaccessible directory in your site structure?
Due to CMS constraints, there may be some nodes in our site tree that are inaccessible and will automatically redirect to their parent folder. Here's an example: www.site.com/folder1/folder2/content, /folder2 redirects to /folder1. This would only be for the single URL itself, not the subpages (i.e. /folder1/folder2/content and anything below that would be accessible). Is there any real risk in this approach from a technical SEO perspective? I'm thinking this is likely a non-issue but I'm hoping someone with more experience can confirm. Another potential option is to have /folder2 accessible (it would be 100% identical to /folder1, long story) and use a canonical tag to point back to /folder1. I'm still waiting to hear if this is possible. Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Aug 25, 2015, 11:24 AM | digitalcrc0 -
Domain expiration and seo
My domain name is free with my service with yahoo but it expires every year and gets extended automatically as I continue service, how does this impact my seo efforts? I've heard that the search engines prefer sites to expire in 3 years or more? Is this a fact?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jun 17, 2012, 7:04 PM | bronxpad0 -
Migrating online store to subdomain using shopify and effects on seo and energy down the road for seo
I'm looking for some clarity... Looking at using Shopify for an existing online store that we have to migrate. Setting up the store with shopify means we will be using a subdomain such as shop.mywebsite.com instead of mywebsite.com/shop. The following are points to consider when responding The client currently has an online store, however it's a proprietary shopping store and CMS that has since gone defunct and they need to migrate to an alternative in order to survive online against new CMS systems that allow the site and its content to be better optimized. There is a lot of existing SEO done on the current site that we don't want to loose PR on. There is roughly 2000 products Client has a fixed budget, dealing with checkout issues, custom work and various other "bugs" seems to be easier controlled with Shopify...thus budget can be used more on content/strategy and migration We want to run the main site in Wordpress and are wanting to use Shopify since it supports a gateway, has great features and seems like it would allow us to get more bang for the buck and can focus more on the main site and content strategy and drive traffic to the subdomain store if needed Or main concern is the effort of migrating 2000+ products to shopify and the traffic and PR it gives the current site will have a negative effect on the main domain itself. Should we really be considering this path? The domain is diveidc.com One main benefit to the subdomain is the ability to clearly segment products from the service portion of the site in the analytics and focus 2 clear strategies and track it in a very defined manner. We're really on the fence with this...any thoughts are welcome.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Sep 25, 2011, 3:33 PM | MAGNUMCreative0 -
Does capitalization matter for SEO?
Two places capitalization comes into play: (1) on-page use (title, h1, body text, img alt text, etc) (2) external anchor text I didn't think it mattered from Google's point of view for on-page usage (is this correct?) but I notice that OpenSiteExplorer' s 'anchor text distribution' tab shows different counts for the same keyword if it's capitalized in different ways (eg seomoz.org is listed separate from SEOmoz.org). Is that just OSE or does Google treat the keyword/phrase different based on its capitalization, too? And if so, then should I be creating external links to my site with the 'regular' and 'Capitalized' versions of my key phrases?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jun 23, 2016, 9:30 PM | scanlin1