Two Domains, Same Products/Content
-
We're an e-commerce company with two domains. One is our original company name/domain, one is a newer top-level domain. The older domain doesn't receive as much traffic but is still searched and used by long-time customers who are loyal to that brand, who we don't want to alienate.
The sites are both identical in products and content, which creates a duplicate content issue. I have come across two options so far:
1. a 301 redirect from the old domain to the new one.
2. Optimize the content on the newer domain (the strongest of the two) and leave the older domain content as is.
Does anyone know of a solution better than the two I listed above or have experience resolving a similar problem in the past?
-
The original poster's situation sounds like merging two sites rather than moving a site from one domain name to another. Matt Cutts specifically recommended against using the Change of Address tool for merging sites in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6pyAWJ5BRs
-
Having been in a similar situation before, I definitely vote 301 redirect asap, _provided that the old domain has a clean backlink profile._The last thing you want to do is tank organic traffic by adding the old site's spam links to the main site.
Make sure both sites are in Google Search Console, and neither has any manual action notices. Then go into "links to your site" and download all links. Get links from Moz's Open Site Explorer and Bing's Webmaster Tools as well (and any other tools you have); You want as complete a picture as possible. Once you have as many links as you can find, start auditing manually. After a while it will become easier to spot spam links, as they tend to have an easily recognizable pattern.
If you find spam links, remove and disavow before you redirect. Note that you'll have to disavow bad links to the old site **on the new site's disavow file **when you redirect it, as that's where Google will look for it. If you don't find spam, redirect.
I wouldn't let the site rot. That would be a potential security issue and a customer service nightmare.
-
There are a few options. I do recommend "picking one" domain and 301 redirecting that one to the preferred domain. Then make sure you use the Google Change of Address tool to tell Google that you've moved.
Another option is to keep both sites live and then use the Canonical Tag to tell Google which domain is the preferred one. You'll have to do that at the page level, on each individual page.
I prefer, though, to use the 301 redirect option and the Change of Address tool.
-
Your welcome I'm glad I could help.
-
Thanks for the comment Jordan, very helpful.
-
Is there a particular reason that you don't want to 301-redirect the old domain to the new domain? If customers go to the old domain or even search the domain name, they'll be redirected to the new one automatically. Can you help us understand why this is not ideal?
-
I'd recommend doing a 301 redirect to the new domain. You want to rectify that duplicate content issue as soon as possible. If the new site is intuitive and has the same content and products you would not be alienating your long time customer base. I would recommend doing a page to page redirect though as opposed to a blanket redirect to the new domain entirely both Moz and Google have some good resources on this.
You can easily crawl both sites with Moz or Screaming frog and put in your 301's that way. Hope this helps let me know if you have any other questions.
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
-
Revamping/Re-optimizing State Pages - What to do with old content?
Hello Moz Fam! I work in the insurance industry and we serve all 50 states. We have a state page for each state where the content is thin(ish). We're slowly revamping each page and hitting every talking point for that specific state. I've used multiple tools to come up with a content template and link building template for each page as well. I spent 5 months last year proof reading all these pages. So the content is good, just not SEO good. I didn't have the team or resources to really optimize them all yet, now I do. My question is... what should I do with the old content? I was thinking of publishing it to other platforms that we have a contributor account on and linking back to each state page with it. Of course, I would wait a few days for the search engines to index the new content so it wouldn't be duplicated on these platforms. Good or bad idea?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LindsayE0 -
Duplicate content across domains?
Does anyone have suggestions for managing duplicate product/solution website content across domains? (specifically parent/child company domains) Is it advisable to do this? Will it hurt either domain? Any best practices when going down this path?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pilgrimquality0 -
How Can I Redirect an Old Domain to Our New Domain in .htaccess?
There is an old version of http://chesapeakeregional.com still floating around the web here: http://www.dev3.com.php53-24.dfw1-2.websitetestlink.com/component/content/category/20-our-services. Various iterations of this domain pop up when I do certain site:searches and for some queries as well (such as "Diagnostic Center of Chesapeake"). About 3 months ago the websitetestlink site had files and a fully functional navigation but now it mostly returns 404 or 500 errors. I'd like to redirect the site to our newer site, but don't believe I can do that in chesapeakeregional.com's .htaccess file. Is that so and would I need access to the websitetestlink .htaccess to forward the domain? Note* I (nor anyone else in our organization) has the login for the old site. The new site went live about 9 months before I arrived at the organization and I've been slowly putting the pieces together since arriving.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | smpomoryCRH0 -
How to title my products?
Hi, really struggling with product titles. Or should I say keeping staff writing out titles. If I sell a Coat. I would like the product titled like: Armani Jeans Coat Green but staff are doing it like Armani Jeans Fur Hooded Coat Green. Now I think this effects our SEO efforts as how likely are people to search for the Fur Hooded coat part? Yes we might hit the numbers of the small search but is it really worth it? Would it not be best put this Fur Hooded part in the short description and long description? I am trying to make my SEO titles and meta descriptions consistant for 1 product. But find it hard writing out Fur Hooded in the Meta Title when I know numbers will be minimal? The SEO titles or the product titles are effectively links on the website for each product. So hold more weight and the product titles act as the H1 titles on the product page itself. Surely we would be best using Armani Jeans Coat Green rather than such a long, obscure title that will gain very little search? Whats best way to approach this issue? As we can have products titled like: Creative Recreation Kaplan Patent Leather/Snake Trainers Charcoal. Which to me is too long, too obscure. Surely the extra detail should go in Short Description which is visible on the catelog page and keep the product titles shorted and more to the point, eg Creative Recreation Kaplan Trainers Snake Charcoal? All this Patent Leather/ business seems pointless to me? Any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | YNWA0 -
Using Webmaster Tools to Redirect Domain to Specific Page on Another Domain
Hey Everyone, we redirected an entire domain to a specific URL on another domain (not the homepage). We used a 301 Redirect, but I'm also wondering if I should use the Google Webmaster Tools "Change of Address" section to redirect. There is no option to redirect the old domain to the specific URL on the new domain within the "Change of Address" section. Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | M_D_Golden_Peak0 -
Multiple domain level redirects to unique sub-folder on one domain...
Hi, I have a restaurant menu directory listing website (for example www.menus.com). Restaurant can have there menu listed on this site along with other details such as opening hours, photos ect. An example of a restaurant url might be www.menus.com/london/bobs-pizza. A feature i would like to offer is the ability for Bob's pizza to use the menus.com website listing as his own website (let assume he has no website currently). I would like to purchase www.bobspizza.com and 301 redirect to www.menus.com/london/bobs-pizza Why?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | blackrails
So bob can then list bobspizza.com on his advertising material (business cards etc, rather than www.menus.com/london/bobs-pizza). I was considering using a 301 redirect for this though have been told that too many domain level redirects to one single domain can be flagged as spam by Google. Is there any other way to achieve this outcome without being penalised? Rel canonical url, url masking? Other things to note: It is fine if www.bobspizza.com is NOT listed in search results. I would ideally like any link juice pointing to www.bobspizza.com to pass onto www.menus.com though this is a nice to have. If it comes at the cost of being penalised i can live without the link juice from this. Thanks0 -
Blog/Shop/Forum site structure - are we right to make these changes?
We run a fairly large online community with a popular blog and Europe's largest online shop for drift-specific motor sport parts and our website has been around since 2004 I believe. Since it was launched, the blog (or previous CMS system) has been at the domain root, the forums have been located at /forum and the shop at /shop (or similar) but we have decided to move things around a bit and would like some comments as to whether we are doing the right thing or if you would make any addition or different changes to us. Currently the entire website gets around 3m page views per month from 500,000 visitors, but this is split roughly 75% to the forums, 10% to the shop and 15% to the blog (but remember the blog is at the root so anyone who visits our homepage "visits" the blog). We plan to move the shop to the domain root (since the shop provides the income for the business - surely it should be the 1st thing visitors see?), the blog from root to /blog and the forums will stay where they are at /forum. We have read Steven Macdonald's post here, and have taken notes to help minimize traffic loss and disruption to our army of users and hopefully avoid too many penalties from Google and plan to: 301 redirect old URLs to new ones where they have changed. Submit new site maps to search engines. Update old links where we have control (such as forums where we are paid traders etc.). Send out a newsletter to our subscribers. Update our forum members. Fix errors via WMT before and after the re-structure. Should we be taking this opportunity to actually set each of the three sections of the site to it's own sub domain? Our thoughts are that if we are disrupting things, it's surely best to have lots of disruption once rather than a little bit of disruption several times over a 3-6 month period? OSE shows us to have roughly 1500 inbound links to /shop, 2100 to /forum and 4800 to the root / - if we proceed with our plan and put 301 redirects in place this seems to be the best plan to retain the value of these links but if we were to switch to sub domains would the 301s lose most of the link values due to them being on "different" domains? Any help, advise or suggestions are very welcome but comments from experience are what we are seeking ideally! Thanks Jay
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DWJames0 -
Http://blogsearch.google.com/ping
Is there any reason why a website would submit all their content (videos, photo galleries, articles) to this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MargaritaS0