undefined
Skip to content
Moz logo Menu open Menu close
  • Products
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Pro Home
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Home
    • STAT
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Home
    • Compare SEO Products
    • Moz Data
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis
    • Keyword Explorer
    • Link Explorer
    • Competitive Research
    • MozBar
    • More Free SEO Tools
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
    • SEO Learning Center
    • Moz Academy
    • SEO Q&A
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • Case Studies
    • The Moz Story
    • New Releases
  • Log in
  • Log out
  • Products
    • Moz Pro

      Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

    • Moz Local

      Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

    • STAT

      SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

    • Moz API

      Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

    • Compare SEO Products

      See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

    • Moz Data

      Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis

      Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

    • Keyword Explorer

      Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

    • Link Explorer

      Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

    • Competitive Research

      Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

    • MozBar

      See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

    • More Free SEO Tools

      Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO

      The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

    • SEO Learning Center

      Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

    • On-Demand Webinars

      Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

    • How-To Guides

      Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

    • Moz Academy

      Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

    • MozCon

      Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
    Moz API

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

    Find your plan
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Small Business Solutions

      Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

    • Agency Solutions

      Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

    • Enterprise Solutions

      Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

    • The Moz Story

      Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

    • Case Studies

      Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

    • New Releases

      Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

    Surface actionable competitive intel
    New Feature

    Surface actionable competitive intel

    Learn More
  • Log in
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Dashboard
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Dashboard
    • Moz Academy
  • Avatar
    • Moz Home
    • Notifications
    • Account & Billing
    • Manage Users
    • Community Profile
    • My Q&A
    • My Videos
    • Log Out

The Moz Q&A Forum

  • Forum
  • Questions
  • Users
  • Ask the Community

Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

  1. Home
  2. SEO Tactics
  3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
  4. One domain or two for one company with two lines of business?

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.

One domain or two for one company with two lines of business?

Intermediate & Advanced SEO
4
5
3.7k
Loading More Posts
  • Oldest to Newest
  • Newest to Oldest
  • Most Votes
Reply
  • Reply as question
Log in to reply
This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
  • Jazee
    Jazee last edited by Sep 26, 2016, 9:23 PM

    Let's say you are building a new company that is involved in two lines of business.  Let's for example say one line of business is handling logistics for large conventions where the customer(s) are large corporation and the other line is for wedding planning.  Let's say that for certain reasons the owner wants to operate under one brand name, say "PROEVENT"  So they will market themselves as PROEVENT Convention Logistics and PROEVENT Wedding Planners.

    From an SEO perspective, if you have one side of the business doing B-to-B corporate business and the other doing B-to-C do you create two different websites on different domains (proeventconventions.com and proeventweddings.com) with unique design and content, or, do you just use provent.com in order to build better domain authority and on your marketing you use conventions.provent.com that takes you to the convention section of the website and weddings.provent.com takes you to the weddings section?

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • BlueCorona
      BlueCorona last edited by Oct 18, 2016, 6:36 PM Oct 18, 2016, 6:36 PM

      Hi Jazee,

      At the end of the day, this ultimately comes down to what you think is best for the company. I do agree with the other answers that building these out as two separate sites could be a better option. And I am going to add on a few more factors that I think you should consider before making this decision. Because the services are so different, you will be able to get target the website (think: backlink outreach) if the website is on one specific topic rather than focusing on multiple services.

      However, if these are on one website, you should be able to grow the domain authority more quickly because in theory you could have double the amount of backlinks (link from websites for each service) linking to the one domain.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
      • topic:timeago_earlier,21 days
      • Jazee
        Jazee last edited by Sep 27, 2016, 2:34 PM Sep 27, 2016, 2:31 PM

        Very good points.

        Maybe a more interesting and important question becomes, what are the main decision points (criteria) for when you DO use one domain.  For discussion sake, let me throw out a somewhat different hypothetical situation.

        Let's say it's a Photography business that focuses on two main types of service.  One type is Wedding Photography, the other type is Commercial Real Estate Photography. Again, the similarity with the previous situation is one is a B2C and the other is a B2B.  But here I think the type of service is closer between the too so maybe a more difficult decision?

        I think maybe the first question you may need to ask is by taking a step back and asking realistically where is your business going to come from?  From my own personal experience knowing a lot of people that have gotten married it seems that a very large portion of Wedding Photographers get their business via referrals.  Not Google organic search results. In the B2B sector, in many spaces it also holds true that many business relationships are formed via networking/referrals.  Back on the Wedding Photography side, I'd venture to say out of the non-word of mouth sources, Yelp might be actually more important than Google.  SEO is pretty much irrelevant as far as ranking on Yelp.

        SO...  I think the first question you have to ask is, do I anticipate a majority of my business will come from people finding me through Google Maps or Google Organic Search results, versus word of mouth and business directories like Yelp.  If the answer is NO, the SEO benefit of the single versus multiple website structure becomes less important IMHO.

        Let's assume though the majority will come from Google Maps and Organic Results (even though there's also the option of doing Adwords).  So what are the next important questions to ask?

        1. How different are the two lines of business? (the obvious question which has already been discussed)

        2. Will a potential client be less confident about or less impressed with the business if they see the business doesn't specialize in the service being sought?  A tough question to answer but I think more likely the answer is yes in the event planning example and possibly NO in the photography example.  A good photographer is a good photographer IMHO.

        3. How much resources are going to be available to create on an ongoing basis different content on two different websites?  Do you have the time to write two different blogs?  This may be a more minor consideration though as these types of businesses don't need extremely fresh and rapidly updated blogs.

        4. Is the competition for the primary keywords for the two lines of business low, medium, high for the target audience/geography?  Maybe this is actually the most important.  With separate sites, you can optimize the domain name, title tag, keyword density, etc. for that line of business more so than if you have one site since there is only one root home page. But that may be offset in part or in whole by the diluted domain authority if you do two sites. But if the ranking competition is low, then this isn't as big of a factor in the decision?

        Which factor(s) are most important in the decision? Other deciding factors?

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
        • Andy.Drinkwater
          Andy.Drinkwater last edited by Sep 27, 2016, 7:20 AM Sep 27, 2016, 7:20 AM

          Absolutely agree with James - the businesses are just too different to be on the same domain. If I were Google looking at a site that offers wedding photography and then logistics, I would wonder which one it is meant to be.

          Some businesses can carry this off if they are sufficiently similar, but not in a case such as this.

          -Andy

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • mcmnetjames
            mcmnetjames last edited by Sep 27, 2016, 4:40 AM Sep 27, 2016, 4:40 AM

            Hi Jazee,

            I would say that, while there are advantages of having the two lines of business on the same domain (such as having to build domain authority for one website instead of two), from an SEO perspective your optimisation tactics will differ between the two business services.

            For example, your link building for the Wedding Planners side of the business will likely require different strategies to Convention Logistics. For this reason, if it were my company, I would keep them on separate domains. There would also be other considerations, such as your content strategy and whether you will have a blog for both, one for each, or no blog at all.

            This does depend on factors such as your SEO plans for the businesses, how closely linked the two sides are, how much you can invest in SEO, whether your domains are both starting from scratch (i.e. no domain authority).

            In the long run you'll have one website optimised for Wedding Planners and another optimised for Convention Logistics, which in my opinion is better than one website that is split between two different industries.

            Hope this helps.

            Best regards,

            James

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • 1 / 1
            1 out of 5
            • First post
              1/5
              Last post

            Got a burning SEO question?

            Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


            Start my free trial


            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.

            • See all categories

            Related Questions

            • ffctas

              Combining Two Sites With Similar Domain Authority

              Hello, We run two sites with the same product, product descriptions and url structure. Essentially, the two sites are the same except for domain name and minor differences on the home pages. We've run this way for quite a few years. Both sites have a domain authority of 48 and there are not a large number of duplicate incoming links. I understand the "book" to say we should combine the sites with 301's to the similar pages. I am concerned about doing this because "site 2" still does about 20% of our business. We have been losing organic traffic for a number of years. I think this mainly has to do with a more competitive environment. However, where google used to serve both our sites for a search term it now will only show one. How much organic benefit should we see if we combine. Will it be significant enough to merge the two sites. Understandably, I realize the future can't be predicted but I would like to know if anyone has had a similar experience or opinion Thanks

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jan 31, 2019, 4:18 PM | ffctas
              0
            • Joseph-Green-SEO

              One domain - Multiple servers

              Can I have the root domain pointing to one server and other URLs on the domain pointing to another server without redirecting, domain masking or HTML masking? Dealing with an old site that is a mess. I want to avoid migrating the old website to the new environment. I want to work on a page by page and section by section basis, and whatever gets ready to go live I will release on the new server while keeping all other pages untouched and live on the old server. What are your recommendations?

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | May 9, 2017, 8:58 AM | Joseph-Green-SEO
              0
            • Carissamay

              Why is my domain authority still 1?

              I changed the domain of my website from www.vanillacrush.co.uk to www.carissamay.co.uk at the end of December and yet my DA for carissamay is still 1. As advised, I set up a 301 redirect from VC to CM which seems to be working fine. However when I check on redirect detective it tells me I also have a 302 set up. Could this be confusing things? http://www.vanillacrush.co.uk http://www.vanillacrush.co.uk/ http://www.carissamay.co.uk Any help would be greatly appreciated! Many thanks

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Feb 11, 2017, 2:56 PM | Carissamay
              0
            • dbaxa-261338

              Consolidating Multiple Domains into A Single Domain

              I have a client who's website is an amalgamation of multiple domains. jacksonhole.net is the main domain but the site passes traffic back and forth from the following domains/sites. My questions is, would it it be better for SEO to consolidate all of these domains under the single high authority domain and 301 redirect the rest or is that a really bad idea?  Thanks for your help. jacksonhole.net (Domain Authority 31) jackson-hole-rental-condos.com (Domain Authority 22) jackson-hole-rental-homes.com (Domain Authority 21) j acksonholehotelguide.com (Domain Authority 19)

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jan 18, 2016, 1:26 PM | dbaxa-261338
              1
            • footd

              Community inside the domain or in a separate domain

              Hi there, I work for an ecommerce company as an online marketing consultant. They make kitchenware, microware and so on. The are reviewing their overall strategy and as such they want to build up a community. Ideally, they would want to have the community in a separate domain. This domain wouldn't have the logo of the brand. This community wouldn't promote the brand itself. The brand would post content occassionally and link the store domain. The reasoning of this approach is to not interfere in the way of the community users and also the fact that the branded traffic acquired doesn't end up buying at the store I like this approach but I am concerned because the brand is not that big to have two domains separated and lose all the authority associated with one strong domain. I would definitely have everything under the same domain, store and community, otherwise we would have to acquire traffic for two domains. 1. What do you think of both scenarios, one domain versus two? Which one is better? 2. Do you know any examples of ecommerce companies with successful communities within the store domain? Thanks and regards

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | May 21, 2014, 6:31 AM | footd
              0
            • Branden_S

              Using pictures from another domain

              We are building several sites for several clients which will be using images from the manufacturer.  Our dev team wants to insert the manufacturer's url for the images, instead of actually downloading the image and hosting on our server.  There are thousands of images, so downloading images to our server will be time consuming, so we are looking for a shortcut.... however I'm concerned this will cause other issues. Is using manufactueresdomain.com/12345.jpg going to cause SEO issues?  will this generate Google penalties?  Since we are not able to control the image file name, we cannot optimize it.  We will add Alt text and Title tag for each image, but the file name is random characters.  How important is the file name for SEO?

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Apr 8, 2014, 1:17 PM | Branden_S
              0
            • WMCA

              XML Sitemap on another domain

              Hi, We've rebuilt our website and created a better sitemap index structure. There's a good chance that we not be able to append the XML files to existing site for technical reasons (don't get me started). I'm reaching out because I'm wondering if can we place the XML files on another website or subdomain? I know this is not best practice and probably very grey but I'm looking for alternatives. If there answer is DON'T DO IT let me know too. Thx

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Oct 30, 2013, 1:24 AM | WMCA
              0
            • jasonwdexter

              Redirect ruined domain to new domain without passing link juice

              A new client has a domain which has been hammered by bad links, updates etc and it's basically on its arse because of previous SEO guys. They have various domains for their business (brand.com, brand.co.uk) and want to use a fresh domain and take it from there. Their current domain is brand.com (the ruined one). They're not bothered about the rankings for brand.com but they want to redirect brand.com to brand.co.uk so that previous clients can find them easily. Would a 302 redirect work for this? I don't want to set up a 301 redirect as I don't want any of the crappy links pointing across. Thanks!

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jul 8, 2013, 12:27 PM | jasonwdexter
              0

            Get started with Moz Pro!

            Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

            Start my free trial
            Products
            • Moz Pro
            • Moz Local
            • Moz API
            • Moz Data
            • STAT
            • Product Updates
            Moz Solutions
            • SMB Solutions
            • Agency Solutions
            • Enterprise Solutions
            Free SEO Tools
            • Domain Authority Checker
            • Link Explorer
            • Keyword Explorer
            • Competitive Research
            • Brand Authority Checker
            • Local Citation Checker
            • MozBar Extension
            • MozCast
            Resources
            • Blog
            • SEO Learning Center
            • Help Hub
            • Beginner's Guide to SEO
            • How-to Guides
            • Moz Academy
            • API Docs
            About Moz
            • About
            • Team
            • Careers
            • Contact
            Why Moz
            • Case Studies
            • Testimonials
            Get Involved
            • Become an Affiliate
            • MozCon
            • Webinars
            • Practical Marketer Series
            • MozPod
            Connect with us

            Contact the Help team

            Join our newsletter
            Moz logo
            © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
            • Accessibility
            • Terms of Use
            • Privacy

            Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.