Two domains / same Content
-
Hi MOZzers,
I have recently started working for a client who owns two domains (as recommended by their Web Development company), each omain is a complete duplication of the other. The only difference is one is a totally keyword focused domain name, the other is their brand name which also contains keyword. In a search for blocks of content the keyword focused domain comes up, the other doesn't and when I conducted a search for one of their primary services again the keyword focused domain name came up on the first page, but the branded search also appeared on the second. The web development company have been managing this company's Adwords account and promoting their brand name and up until today I was unaware of the other. Can I have some thoughts - do I ask the web developers to re-direct one to the other, or leave as it?
-
Hi Guys,
Thanks so much for the responses - I will speak to the client. They were totally unaware of the impact that this would have on them and they were in fact told they must do this (this was by one of the largest web dev. companies in NZ btw!)
-
PS. Just found that excellent HTaccess tutorial take a look at http://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/website/redirects/setting-up-a-301-permanent-redirect-via-htaccess
-
1st Don't rush into anything, You must decide the end goal and results you would like to achieve.
2nd Duplicate content is bad, although you may not get a penalty it is definitely a black mark.
3rd 301's are a good option like Aaron said, just bear in mind you will likely lose the position in the search engine for the old URL and you may not regain the position with the new domain. I would recommend using a url rewrite in the htaccess file otherwise you will end up with a generic 301 and a lot of links broken.
Let's say this is some of your old URLs:-
www.domain.com/blog/how-to-look-smart
Let's say your new site is www.newdomain.com (With the same content links etc), If you did a standard 301 it would divert to www.newdomain.com However the subsequent URL after the.com would be lost i.e. they would just end up on the homepage of www.newdomain.com not www.newdomain.com/product/shoes.
In your htaccess file you set up a rewrite so it would redirect to the new domain name without changing the URL structure like this www.domain.com/product/shoes Redirects to www.newdomain.com/product/shoes
-
100% agree with Aaron.
Another solution, if they're adamant on having both websites, is to create new content for one of the sites so they're not competing directly against each other and there's no duplicate content. It really depends on the size of the website and its services though, of course. But you could focus on the brand with the branded website, and treat the keyworded domain one as like a "supplier" of that brand.
-
I would 100% 301 one of the sites and clean this up right away. Your client could get done for a lot of different things from google seeing it as a network of sites to panda issues for sure.
I would look into the history and backend of both sites to insure there is no issues but in saying that sometimes doing the keyword focused domain name can make it harder for your when building links as anchor become harder.
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
-
SEO advice on ecommerce url structure where categories contain "/c/"
Hi! We use Hybris as plattform and I would like input on which url to choose. We must keep "/c/" before the actual category. c stands for category. I.e. this current url format will be shortened and cleaned:
Technical SEO | | hampgunn
https://www.granngarden.se/Sortiment/Husdjur/Hund/Hundfoder-%26-Hundmat/c/hundfoder To either: a.
https://www.granngarden.se/husdjur/hund/hundfoder/c/hundfoder b.
https://www.granngarden.se/husdjur/hund/c/hundfoder (hundfoder means dogfood) The question is whether we should keep the duplicated category name (hundfoder) before the "/c/" or not. Will there be SEO disadvantages by removing the duplicate "hundfoder" before the "/c/"? I prefer the shorter version ofc, but do not want to jeopardize any SEO rankings or send confusing signals to search engines or customers due to the "/c/" breaking up the url breadcrumb. What do you guys say and prefer from the above alternatives? Thanks /Hampus0 -
Duplicate content
Hello mozzers, I have an unusual question. I've created a page that I am fully aware that it is near 100% duplicate content. It quotes the law, so it's not changeable. The page is very linkable in my niche. Is there a way I can build quality links to it that benefit my overall websites DA (i'm not bothered about the linkable page being ranked) without risking panda/dupe content issues? Thanks, Peter
Technical SEO | | peterm21 -
Followed Linking Root Domains and No Followed Linking Domains
If you have more NoFollowed Linking Root Domains than Followed Linking Root Domains is that a problem?
Technical SEO | | INN0 -
UK and US Targeting Simultaneously - Domain Setup and Duplicate Content?
I have a site that will be targeting the US and the UK. However, it will need to display slightly different content to the two. Should I use a .co.uk and a .com, or uk.themainsite.com for the UK, or themainsite.com/UK? This is of course setting up multiple country targeting within Google Webmaster Tools. Am I likely to run into duplicate content issues?
Technical SEO | | james4060 -
How do I Address Low Quality/Duplicate Content Issue for a Job portal?
Hi, I want to optimize my job portal for maximum search traffic. Problems Duplicate content- The portal takes jobs from other portals/blogs and posts on our site. Sometimes employers provide the same job posting to multiple portals and we are not allowed to change it resulting in duplicate content Empty Content Pages- We have a lot of pages which can be reached via filtering for multiple options. Like IT jobs in New York. If there are no IT jobs posted in New York, then it's a blank page with little or no content Repeated Content- When we have job postings, we have about the company information on each job listing page. If a company has 1000 jobs listed with us, that means 1000 pages have the exact same about the company wording Solutions Implemented Rel=prev and next. We have implemented this for pagination. We also have self referencing canonical tags on each page. Even if they are filtered with additional parameters, our system strips of the parameters and shows the correct URL all the time for both rel=prev and next as well as self canonical tags For duplicate content- Due to the volume of the job listings that come each day, it's impossible to create unique content for each. We try to make the initial paragraph (at least 130 characters) unique. However, we use a template system for each jobs. So a similar pattern can be detected after even 10 or 15 jobs. Sometimes we also take the wordy job descriptions and convert them into bullet points. If bullet points already available, we take only a few bullet points and try to re-shuffle them at times Can anyone provide me additional pointers to improve my site in terms of on-page SEO/technical SEO? Any help would be much appreciated. We are also thinking of no-indexing or deleting old jobs once they cross X number of days. Do you think this would be a smart strategy? Should I No-index empty listing pages as well? Thank you.
Technical SEO | | jombay3 -
Will same language different region (US/UK) geotargeting via subdirectory (& GWT) cause dupe content or other issues ?
If a UK hosted site on a .com, needs to target US now too but for keywords that are spelt differently in US is creating duplicate version of uk hosted .com site and putting it on a subdirectory .com/us/ and geotargeting via webmaster tools (to usa) ok ? I take it in this scenario no dupe content issues (or other issues) so long as is geotargeted via GWT ? Or are there ? Comments from anyone with experience doing similar (same language, different region geo-targeting dupe content with kw spelling being only difference, via a subdirectory or other route) much appreciated ? Many Thanks 🙂
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Sub Domains
Hi,,, Okay we have 1 main site , a few years back we went down the road of sub domains and generated about 10. They have page rank and age but we wish to move them back to the main web site. What is the correct or best way to achieve this. 1 copy all content to the main web site creating dup pages and then use a redirects from the sub pages to the new dup pages on the main domain... or 2 write new content on the main domain for the subdomain pages and redirect to the new content. Problem with 2 is the amount of work involved...
Technical SEO | | NotThatFast0 -
The Bible and Duplicate Content
We have our complete set of scriptures online, including the Bible at http://lds.org/scriptures. Users can browse to any of the volumes of scriptures. We've improved the user experience by allowing users to link to specific verses in context which will scroll to and highlight the linked verse. However, this creates a significant amount of duplicate content. For example, these links: http://lds.org/scriptures/nt/james/1.5 http://lds.org/scriptures/nt/james/1.5-10 http://lds.org/scriptures/nt/james/1 All of those will link to the same chapter in the book of James, yet the first two will highlight the verse 5 and verses 5-10 respectively. This is a good user experience because in other sections of our site and on blogs throughout the world webmasters link to specific verses so the reader can see the verse in context of the rest of the chapter. Another bible site has separate html pages for each verse individually and tends to outrank us because of this (and possibly some other reasons) for long tail chapter/verse queries. However, our tests indicated that the current version is preferred by users. We have a sitemap ready to publish which includes a URL for every chapter/verse. We hope this will improve indexing of some of the more popular verses. However, Googlebot is going to see some duplicate content as it crawls that sitemap! So the question is: is the sitemap a good idea realizing that we can't revert back to including each chapter/verse on its own unique page? We are also going to recommend that we create unique titles for each of the verses and pass a portion of the text from the verse into the meta description. Will this perhaps be enough to satisfy Googlebot that the pages are in fact unique? They certainly are from a user perspective. Thanks all for taking the time!
Technical SEO | | LDS-SEO0