How Best To Accommodate A Site's Changing Subject Matter?
-
Hi,
I'm dealing with a several year old site that has had a lot of success in organic search around one particular subject and is now evolving into other subjects. Would like your experience on how best to handle this.
Here's what we have so far:
First, the site was about niche craft carpentry. Then, it added training. Then, it added training in other subjects in smatterings, like plumbing, electrical, etc.
Now it's considering adding training in subjects even further from niche craft carpentry. So, interior decorator training, landscaping training, etc.
Nearly all of it's organic search traffic (about 200,00 per month) comes from blogs, articles and discussions related to the original topic of niche craft carpentry... not training. As we've branched out from carpentry into carpentry training and then other subject training, have not had great success in organic with these new less related topics. We've had some for carpentry training type terms, but not much else.
If the site owners are hell bent on expanding into these other training subjects for business reasons other than search, how would you structure it?
For instance, would you go originalsitename.com/landscaping or landscaping.OriginalSiteName.com or what?
I understand that a landscaping.originalsitename.com is for all intents and purposes a new domain name and won't have the authority of the original. However, would it have more chance of breaking free of how Google has pigeon-holed the original site's subject matter as niche carpentry-relevant only?
Or, would you just keep adding subjects to the original domain name and figure that one of these days google is going to see it as the Lynda.com of an expanding galaxy of home improvement?
I should add that the future of the site is training, so landscape training or interior design training is pretty far from high end niche carpentry stuff.
What do you think?
Thanks!
-
Brodie has identified the issue - it is splitting available resources. The work that goes into one domain is huge. If you have two domains - then you are doubling the work.
Ie I use the house analogy. Two domains is like owning two houses, two sets of bills, travel between the two, everything different. You likely need different resources, to make it look and feel differently to some extent. If you keep everything on the same domain - it is like adding a new room to an existing house, so overall the bills are kept down. You can tidy up everything as you move around the one house.
So I always try and err on the side of caution, and try wherever possible to fit within a existing well maintained domain assuming there is a content and relevant nexus. However if the nexus is not there - then well you have no option. As stated by Brodie it is a judgment call. The positive is you can always buy a new house later.... even if you start on your current domain. Also if you want to sidestep the decision all together - you can leave the decision to the money men - CFO and let them know they need to double the digital budget - and see what they say... with a brand new domain...
Good luck hope you have enough info to make the right decision.
-
Yes, but this is a judgement call. There's not necessarily a right or wrong answer.
We went through this with our own company last month. We updated and branded our reputation management software which is much different from our agency business. We decided to go with a completely separate domain, ReviewJump.com, knowing full well that it would require a completely separate marketing strategy. In effect, we split our available resources (time, labor, budget) in order to build up this separate property. In the end we felt it was worth it, even though it meant starting from "scratch."
How different are your subject matters and does it make logical sense to separate them? Then, I guess the question is, are you willing to split your marketing resources between multiple properties?
-
HI John & Brodie,
Point taken. What if the subject matter gets even more further field than the original/existing subject matter. Would it ever be an answer to subdomain.OriginalSiteName.com ?
Thanks!
-
I agree with John. Keep it on the root domain and avoid diluting the online equity you have.
About a year ago I went though this with a client in a similar niche, contracting. The company had multiple websites and was considering dividing them up even further. However, we took the opposite approach and consolidated all their web properties into a single site.
Organization, that's the key. I'm talking about the design as well as the navigation structure. On this particular site we instructed the web developer to color code each section to differentiate the content even further.
The results were great and traffic didn't fall off. In fact, we were able to start attracting traffic for a wider variety of keywords.
Google is smart. It will adapt and learn what your website is about as it evolves.
-
Answer - 100% = originalsitename.com/landscaping. I am an evangelist on this topic with clients!
The nexus is there and I am not sure it is that far removed. People who are looking for training are looking to be educated on related areas. I would not put much thought into the choices as the above is superior to a subdomain for ranking purposes generally.
I also suggest you have a read of this article http://www.bruceclay.com/seo/silo.htm which may also facilitate higher rankings for the new pages when implemented.
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
-
Google Indexed Site A's Content On Site B, Site C etc
Hi All, I have an issue where the content (pages and images) of Site A (www.ericreynolds.photography) are showing up in Google under different domains Site B (www.fastphonerepair.com), Site C (www.quarryhillvet.com), Site D (www.spacasey.com). I believe this happened because I installed an SSL cert on Site A but didn't have the default SSL domain set on the server. You were able to access Site B and any page from Site A and it would pull up properly. I have since fixed that SSL issue and am now doing a 301 redirect from Sites B, C and D to Site A for anything https since Sites B, C, D are not using an SSL cert. My question is, how can I trigger google to re-index all of the sites to remove the wrong listings in the index. I have a screen shot attached so you can see the issue clearer. I have resubmitted my site map but I'm not seeing much of a change in the index for my site. Any help on what I could do would be great. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cwscontent
Eric TeVM49b.png qPtXvME.png1 -
Partial Match or RegEx in Search Console's URL Parameters Tool?
So I currently have approximately 1000 of these URLs indexed, when I only want roughly 100 of them. Let's say the URL is www.example.com/page.php?par1=ABC123=&par2=DEF456=&par3=GHI789= All the indexed URLs follow that same kinda format, but I only want to index the URLs that have a par1 of ABC (but that could be ABC123 or ABC456 or whatever). Using URL Parameters tool in Search Console, I can ask Googlebot to only crawl URLs with a specific value. But is there any way to get a partial match, using regex maybe? Am I wasting my time with Search Console, and should I just disallow any page.php without par1=ABC in robots.txt?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ria_0 -
What's the best URL structure?
I'm setting up pages for my client's website and I'm trying to figure out the best way to do this. Which of the following would be best (let's say the keywords being used are "sell xgadget" "sell xgadget v1" "sell xgadget v2" "sell xgadget v3" etc.). Domain name: sellgadget.com Potential URL structures: 1. sellxgadget.com/v1
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Zing-Marketing
2. sellxgadget.com/xgadget-v1
3. sellxgadget.com/sell-xgadget-v1 Which would be the best URL structure? Which has the least risk of being too keyword spammy for an EMD? Any references for this?0 -
Is there a downside of an image coming from the site's dotted quad and can it be seen as a duplicate?
Ok the question doesn't fully explain the issue. I just want some opinions on this. Here is the backstory. I have a client with a domain that has been around for a while and was doing well but with no backlinks. (Fairly low competition). For some reason they created mirrors of their site on different urls. Then their web designer built them a test site that was a copy of their site on the web designer's url and didn't bother to noindex it. Client's site dived, the web designer's site started ranking for their keywords. So we helped clean that up, and they hired a brand new web designer and redesigned the site. For some reason the dotted quad version of the site started showing up as a referer in GA. So one image on the site comes from that and not the site's url. So I ran a copyscape and site search and discovered the dotted quad version like 69.64.153.116 (not the actual address) was also being indexed by the search engine. To us this seems like a cut and dry duplicate content issue, but I'm having trouble finding much written on the subject. I raised the issue with the dev, and he reluctantly 301 the site to the official url. The second part of this is the web designer still has that one image on the site coming from the numerical version of the site and not the written url. Any thoughts if that has any negative SEO impact? My thought it isn't ideal, but it just looks like an external referral for pulling that one image. I'd love any thoughts or experience on a situation like this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BCutrer0 -
Does D’Italia matter in links when it should be d'Italia?
Hello, I notice some of the back-link anchor text uses html code for a ' The business name is: d'Italia But it shows as: D’Italia. Does Google decipher it as d'Italia?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | infinart0 -
Site has no SEO done on it. It wasn't considered during design. What to do first ?
They opted for videos to explain to people what the website is about, but it ain't working for them. What steps would you take in order to get this site to rank higher without completely changing the design(changing design is out of the question they are low on funds). They also built a blog on wordpress.com and added a .me domain to it. For obvious reasons I'm not mentioning the website.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ternit0 -
Migrating a site from a standalone site to a subdivision of large .gov.uk site
The scenario We’ve been asked by a client, a Non-Government Organisation who are being absorbed by a larger government ministry, for help with the SEO of their site. They will be going from a reasonably large standalone site to a small sub-directory on a high authority government site and they want some input on how best to maintain their rankings. They will be going from the Number 1 ranked site in their niche (current site domainRank 59) to being a sub directory on a domainRank 100 site). The current site will remain, but as a members only resource, behind a paywall. I’ve been checking to see the impact that it had on a related site, but that one has put a catch all 302 redirect on it’s pages so is losing the benefit of a it’s historical authority. My thoughts Robust 301 redirect set up to pass as much benefit as possible to the new pages. Focus on rewriting content to promote most effective keywords – would suggest testing of titles, meta descriptions etc but not sure how often they will be able to edit the new site. ‘We have moved’ messaging going out to webmasters of existing linking sites to try to encourage as much revision of linking as possible. Development of link-bait to try and get the new pages seen. Am I going about this the right way? Thanks in advance. Phil
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | smrs-digital0 -
An Infrastructure Change for a Large eCommerce Site - Any advice?
Hello Mozers, We're currently under going quite a large infrastructure change to our website and I wouldn't to hear your thoughts on the type of things we should be careful of. We currently have close to 4,000 individual products each with their own page. The seo work is then driven behind certain pages which house a catalog display of groups of products. The groups are done by style. An example is we have a page called "Style A" which displays 8 different colours of style A. We then seo the style A page and the individual items received minimal seo work. The change would involve having one individual product page for each style but on that page the user would have the ability to purchase the different colours/variations via menus. This will result in approximately a %70 reduction in the size of our site (as several products will no longer be published) The things we are currently concerned with are: 1. The lose of equity to those unwanted 'style A' pages - I think a series of careful planned 301s will be the solution. 2. Possible loss of long tail traffic to the individual products which might not be caught by one individual page per style. 3. Internal link structure will need to be monitored to make sure that we're still highlight the most important pages as well, important. Sorry for the long post, it's a difficult change to explain without revealing the clients name - any other things we should be thinking about would be greatly appreciated! Thanks Nigel
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NigelJ0