One Main Brand Domain - One EMD which Ranks Better
-
Hello SEO MOZers!
We have one one main ecommerce site and I have just discovered we have an EMD sitting on a .co.uk, for one of our premium product ranges, and it actually outranks our main website. It appears on page one.
My question is how do I handle the EMD? I don't want to start building authority to this site, as we are currently developing the main brand site, however I can't ignore that it is ranking.
There is relatively little content. There are links on the page (it's only one page) that go through to the product section on the main site. But should I 301 redirect it?
What would be your advise? I want to capitalise on any traffic we could benefit from, and ultimately I want the main site to rank better for this product's keywords.
Any help would much appreciated.
-
Hi Robert,
Thank you very much for the detailed reply. The main website is also based in the UK but I'm not sure about the DNS which I will check. If they are on the same DNS, are you saying that redirecting the EMD to the main brand website would contravene Google best practice and we shouldn't do it?
We have a full section for this product range on the main site so it means that there is a viable target for the 301. I just feel like we should be building up this section on the main site and making that better, rather than focusing on the other one, but unfortunately because it ranks so well (I thought Google stopped ranking websites just for the EMD), I need to do something with it!
Thank you for your advise so far. I'm really grateful to you.
Carla
-
Hi Carla,
A couple of questions to consider:
- Is the main site also operating in the UK?
If not you probably don't want to link them as there is lost relevancy unless your e-commerce service area includes the UK and wherever your main domain is targeting.
If they are both in the UK, you are good on this.
- Are the sites both hosted on the same DNS?
If so, you are risking a red flag from Google. 1 or 2 links this way won't hurt, but over time you are leaving footprints which run against Google's best practices and you are risking penalization.
- Do the main site have a page that would be a viable 301 redirect target from the UK site?
If so, you are in pretty good shape and I would consider the redirect. You will be losing some link juice in the process, but traffic will be coming to the site you prefer.
- Just how serious do you want to get about your technical SEO?
EMD's are not the be-all and end-all of SEO. In fact, if I were you, I might be looking at a way to improve the content on the .co.uk site before conducting the 301 redirect in order to boost its rankability as much as possible to give my main site as much of a boost as possible. It's all about how much you have to dedicate to it in terms of resources.
Hope these questions and answers have helped to give you some perspective into how to handle your situation. Let me know if there's anything else I can do to help!
Cheers,
Rob
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
-
Wrong page ranking on SERP, above more relevant page
Often I will see the wrong page, something less relevant to a particular search, appear higher on the SERP than a more relevant page. Why does this happen and how can it be remedied? I found this Moz article, has anything been written on this topic more recently. Thanks! https://moz.com/blog/wrong-page-ranking-in-the-results-6-common-causes-5-solutions
On-Page Optimization | | NicheSocial0 -
Ranking problem.
Hello, Using Moz I can see that my ranks for my site ZenPlugs.com for keywords such as 'ear plugs' and 'molded ear plugs' and several other keywords aren't as high as other sites with similar DAs. I can't see why, am I missing something? Many thanks, Toby
On-Page Optimization | | T0BY0 -
Less Tags better for SEO?
I am currently reviewing my strategy when it comes to categories and tags on my site. Having been no-indexed for some time, and having many tags with just one entry I am thinking that this is not optimal for SEO purposes. This is what I am planning: Categories - Change these to Index, but only after adding a hundred words or so by way of introduction (see this example - https://www.besthostnews.com/news/hosting/a-small-orange-news/). With the categories I am thinking of highlighting key articles as well to improve link juice distribution to older articles that are important. Tags - About half my tags have only 1 entry, with a few more just having 2 entries. I am thinking of deleting all tags with just one entry, and trying to merge those with just two or 3 entries where it makes sense to do so. I will keep these as no-index, but I think this will mean more optimal distribution of link juice within the site. I would appreciate your thoughts \ suggestions on the best practices here.
On-Page Optimization | | TheWebMastercom0 -
Domain authority decreased but rankings increased
Hello! I'm a bit confused. It seems the industry as a whole that my company operates in has taken a bash from the update a few days ago as all of the competitiors have taken a hit to their domain authority. What is confusing is that my websites rankings have increased as well. There has been a change to the robots.txt file in an effort to stop being crawled by SEMRush which is messing with my site stats but that is the only change. Thanks in advance, Ben
On-Page Optimization | | Ben-Cleaver1 -
Can a country level domain perform well in international SEO if all the targeted keywords are related to that country domain?
Hi fellow Mozers, I am doing international SEO on Google US, UK, UAE and Saudi Arabia. All my targeted keywords have my country name in it, for example, export companies in France, best import companies in France and so on. Finally, my website has a country level domain i.e. www.xyz.co.fr _Hence, my questions are: _ 1. Is it good have a country level domain in this case or should I go TLDs? 2. Should my Google Plus page be a local business page or company page from SEO perspective? I have more than 10000 users who have +1 my website. _Thanks in advance. _
On-Page Optimization | | Abhi81870 -
Is it better to drip feed content?
Hi All, I've assembled a collection of 5 closely related articles each about 700 words for publishing by linking to them from on one of my pages and would appreciate some advice on the role out of these articles. Backround: My site is a listings based site and a majority of the content is published on my competitors sites too. This is because advertisers are aiming to spread there adverts wide with the hope of generating more responses. The page I'm targeting ranks 11th but I would like to link it to some new articles and guides to beef it up a bit. My main focus is to rank better for the page that links to these articles and as a result I write up an introduction to the article/guide which serves as my unique content. Question: Is it better to drip feed the new articles onto the site or would it be best to get as much unique content on as quickly as possible to increase the ratio of unique content vs. external duplicate content on the page that links to these articles**?** Thank you in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | Mulith0 -
Purchased domain
We purchased the existing domain www.LancasterPA.com two years ago to promote local businesses. While individual pages within the site are ranking well, we can't get the home page to rank at all in Google. Would there be anything in the history of the domain that could be standing in the way? Or, what else could we check? Our other regional websites are ranking really well. Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | GordyH0 -
Has anyone noticed a big delta between Google and Bing rankings? For example, we rank favorably in Google, but not so favorably in Bing. Are there different tactics I should use to rank better in Bing?
An example is in Google, we currently rank #1 & #2 for "yoga pants" for Athleta and Old Navy. In Bing, I'm on page 2. Any thoughts here?
On-Page Optimization | | kpr0