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.
Will multiple domains from the same company rank for the same keyword search?
-
I'm trying to convince people that we need good marketing reasons for starting multiple domains, as it will be more difficult to rank multiple sites. Does anyone know if Google actively discourages multiple domains from the same company appearing in the search results for the same keyword? We are creating a separate content website which is related to an existing company website. Would you agree that is best to have these sites on one domain with the content site on a sub-domain perhaps? I'm worried about duplication of effort and cross-keyword targeting in particular.
These sites would not have duplicate content.
-
you took offense for how I communicated, and for that I apologize. However if you read the opening of my initial response, I stated that what I was going to write was a more complete response because over-simplification is very dangerous in our industry. People make jumps and leaps of assumption all too often when they don't have a more thorough understanding of the nuances of acceptable vs unacceptable.
-
As you yourself pointed out, there are perfectly legitimate reasons for owning multiple domains that all rank for the same term (ex: nike.com, nikeinc.com, nikeplus.com, etc). Not sure why you are arguing with what I wrote.
-
this is a matter of semantics. Attempting to rank multiple sites for the same phrase IS a spam tactic, and thus a site WILL be penalized for it if that's the intent. I've done audits on enough sites that had been penalized and came to me for help as a result that I know this to be true.
-
Where in Google's TOS does it say that ranking multiple domains for the same phrases is against the guidelines? My original answer is correct: Google will not penalize you for owning multiple domains, only if you are being spammy about it.
-
Actually the correct deeper answer based on both Google policies and SEO best practices is as follows:
- It is directly against Google's terms of service to attempt to rank multiple sites for the same phrases.
- When you have more than one site that contains content that directly competes against any other site, whether its a site you own or someone else owns, or even other content on your own site, Google's multi-algorithm system attempts to determine which site deserves the higher ranking for a particular phrase or search query. In that process their system attempts to then determine whether any of those shouldn't even be indexed, let alone show up in search results.
- Based on these considerations, any of your content could quite possibly suffer from either a loss of position it should otherwise deserve, or even have some or all of its content deindexed. And in a worst case scenario, you could be penalized as well.
SO - the only issue then is this - WHY would you want multiple sites? Do any of the following reasons match your vision? If so, then you CAN have multiple sites IF they are done properly.
A) If you've got a big active brand, with a lot of customers/clients, it can help to create multiple sites often including:
- Corporate Site
- eCommerce Site
- Careers Site
- Community Site
- Charitable Giving Site
- Customer Support Site
B) If you have specific separate and quite distinctly different service or product offerings, you can create multiple sites so that the very different topical intent of each site is kept uniquely refined in that specific funnel and doesn't "pollute" or "dilute" the umbrella topical focus of each niche.
C) If you have an eCommerce site (where intent is online sales) you may have a desire to have a separate community or blog site (where intent is informational) as another way to keep the "intent" funnels cleanly separated.
NOTE:
It is VITAL that you understand the concept that when executed properly, multiple sites are very useful. However, these need to factor in the following:
1. Every site needs to be able to pass the "5 Super-Signals" test:
- Quality
- Uniqueness
- Authority
- Relevance
- Trust
In regard to the above, content needs to be truly unique across each site. While you can have similar content specific to your brand identity, and even some similarity about the umbrella topic of your product or service offerings, this needs to be done in a way that does not violate the "multiple sites for ranking domination" except as it relates to your brand (as opposed to generic non-brand product or service offerings).
2. Each site needs to have a LEGITIMATE business case reason for its existence not considering SEO - the "why this site exists" question needs to pass muster.
3. Every additional site you create requires its own consistent quality effort, as well as trustworthy off-site reinforcement. If a proper concerted effort cannot be maintained over the long-haul on multiple sites, it is much wiser to go with one single unified site.
-
Google won't actively penalize you for owning multiple domains, unless you are going out of your way to be spammy about it. However, you will need a lot more resources in terms of link building, social media promotion, content production, etc.
In general, the best practice from an SEO perspective is to have a single site with the all the content living in subdirectories of the domain. Subdomains are considered in many cases to be separate sites, so you would run into the same issues as having multiple domains.
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
-
Will critical error in wordpress for memory limit affect seo rankings?
will critical error in wordpress to increase memory limit affect seo rankings?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gamstopbet0 -
Will I loose from SEO if I rename my urls to be more keyword friendly?
As a good practice of SEO is to have your keywords in the links. I am thinking of doing some optimization and change my urls to more effective keywords. I am using shopify and there is an option (a tick) that you can check while changing the url (ex. for a category, for a product, for a blog post). This will give a redirection to the old post to the new. Is it good practice? Is it risky for losing SEO or it will help to rank higher because I will have better keywords in my links?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Spiros.im0 -
Keyword difficulty and time to rank
Hello, Is there a correlation between the keyword difficult and the time it takes to rank ? In other words let's say I try to rank for the keyword "seo" and it is going to take 2 years to rank 1 st whereas if I go for "best seo tools in 2018" and it takes just 2 weeks ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Can a .ly domain rank in the United States?
Hello members. I have a question that I am seeking to confirm whether or not I am on the right track. I am interested in purchasing a .ly domain which is the ccTLD for Libya. The purpose of the .ly domain would be for branding purposes however at the same time I do not want to kill the websites ability to rank in Google.com (United States searches) because of this domain. Google does not consider .ly to be one of those generic ccTLDs like. io, .cc, .co, etc. that can rank and Bitly has also moved away from the .ly extension to a .com extension. Back in 2011 when there was unrest in Lybia, a few well known sites that utilized the .ly extension had their domains confiscated such as Letter.ly, Advers.ly and I think Bitly may have been on that list too however with the unrest behind us it is possible to purchase a .ly so being able to obtain one is not an issue. From what I can tell, I should be able to specify in Google Search Console that the website utilizing the .ly extension is a US based website. I can also do this with Google My Business and I will keep the Whois info public so the whois data can been seen as a US based website. Based on everything I just said do any of you think I will be OK if I were to register and use the .ly domain extension and still be able to rank in Google.com (US Searches). Confirmation would help me sleep better. Thanks in advance everyone and have a great day!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | joemaresca0 -
[Very Urgent] More 100 "/search/adult-site-keywords" Crawl errors under Search Console
I just opened my G Search Console and was shocked to see more than 150 Not Found errors under Crawl errors. Mine is a Wordpress site (it's consistently updated too): Here's how they show up: Example 1: URL: www.example.com/search/adult-site-keyword/page2.html/feed/rss2 Linked From: http://an-adult-image-hosting.com/search/adult-site-keyword/page2.html Example 2 (this surprised me the most when I looked at the linked from data): URL: www.example.com/search/adult-site-keyword-2.html/page/3/ Linked From: www.example.com/search/adult-site-keyword-2.html/page/2/ (this is showing as if it's from our own site) http://a-spammy-adult-site.com/search/adult-site-keyword-2.html Example 3: URL: www.example.com/search/adult-site-keyword-3.html Linked From: http://an-adult-image-hosting.com/search/adult-site-keyword-3.html How do I address this issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rmehta10 -
Do low quality subdomains affect the ranking performance/quality of a root domain?
Hi, Late last year the company I work for launched two new websites that, at the time, we believed were completely separate from our main website. The two new websites were set up externally and were not well-planned from an SEO perspective (LOTS of duplicate content) - hence, they have struggled to rank on Google. Since the launch of the new websites we have also noticed that our main website (that previously ranked very well) has suffered a decline in visitation and search engine rank. We initially attributed this to a number of factors, including the state of the market, and ramped up our SEO efforts (seeing minor improvement). We have since realised that these two new websites have been set up as subdomains of our main website, with MOZ displaying the same domain authority and root domain backlink profile. My question is, do poor quality subdomains affect the ranking performance of a root domain? I have not yet managed to find a definitive answer. Please let me know if more information is required - I am quite new to the whole SEO concept. Thanks! Amy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | paulissai0 -
My website is not ranking for primary keywords in Google
I need help regarding some SEO strategy that need to be implemented to my website http://goo.gl/AiOgu1 . My website is a leading live chat product, daily it receives around 2000 unique visitors. Initially the website was impacted by manual link penalty, I cleaned up lot of backlinks, the website revoked from the penalty some where around June'14. Most of the secondary and longtail Keywords started ranking in Google, but unfortunately, it do not rank well for the primary keywords like (live chat, live chat software, helpdesk etc). Since I have done lot of onsite changes and even revamped the content but till now I dont find any improvement. I am unable to understand where I have got structed.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sandeep.clickdesk
can anyone help me out?0 -
Subpage ranking for homepage keyword
Hi all, May seem like a simple scenario and I might be missing something, but my subpage seems to be ranking for my main homepage keyword. The subpage PR is 28 and my domain authority is 17, how can I get my main home page to rank instead of the sub page (product page)? I want to stay away from exact match anchor text links, any suggestions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SO_UK0