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.
Multiple sites in the same niche
-
Hi All
A question regarding multiple sites in the same niche...
If I have say 10 sites all targetting the same niche yet all on different C-class IPs with different hosts, registrars, whois data and ages can I use the same template, or will Google discern a pattern?
Basically I have developed a WordPress template which I want to use on the sites albeit with different logos / brand colours.
NB/ All of the 10 sites will have unique, original content and they will NOT be interlinked
-
Thanks Keri, I have heard that when engaging in such nefarious practices webmaster tools should be avaoided like the plague!
-
Years ago, I was subcontracting and one of the web designer's clients refused 2-3 AdWords charges that totaled about $35. ALL of the Adwords accounts that I had were suspended without warning, even though they were different clients. I had everything in Google Webmaster Tools. They do look at these signals.
-
Indeed it is. I don't know how paranoid I really am about that stuff; but I guess I don't usually work in situations that would call for it.
I usually side with the crowd that says "come on, do you really think Google is researching and analyzing such distant aspects in an attempt to catch a spammer?"
But then again, if I were a search engine...I would indeed research stuff that most people don't think about. Especially if I had such the resources as held by Google. Just sayin'
My interest is kinda peaked though. Let me know what you do and how it works out.
-
Thanks for that Josh...good point about the sidebar content, heads and footers. They will hopefully appear to a user (as well as Google) totally unique. I guess paranoia is the name of the game...hence the question in the first place!!
-
This is a bit of a tricky one. If you're really able to keep them separated then you should be fine. After all, many people download the same WP themes from not only their repository, but from third-party places like themeforest.
Just to be safe though, I would really make sure they are different; regarding sidebar content, etc. I would also make some changes to the heads and footers. Not just the meta, but placement of code, inclusion/exclusion of pieces, etc. Really get in there and make sure.
Honestly though, I don't know what your niche/strategy is; but you're going to have your hands full promoting 10 sites of the same type. If this is an attempt to get them all to rank for the same searches, I would re-consider your strategy. Google is pretty good at figuring that stuff out, especially if a competitor points them in your direction. It can be difficult enough to promote just one site sometimes, let alone having to also worry about what flags you may be throwing up with each of 10 sites.
If you're still going to do it, I would be super paranoid about it. Log into Google Analytics from different computers, never speak about them to people, and each time you meet someone, give them a fake name. I'm certain Google's street view cameras are equipped with microphones to catch spammers on ground-level. But maybe I only think that because the aliens told me....and what do they know about SEO?
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
-
Event Schema for Multiple Occurrences
I am wondering the best way to mark up an event page with multiple occurrences. For example, we have an event that happens over the course of 4 sequential weekends:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Your_Workshop
9/28-9/29
10/5-10/6
10/12-10/13
10/19-10/20 Our website allows us to enter multiple occurrences that results in a single event listing page which outputs all dates (to eliminate duplicate content, titles, metas, etc.) but allows each occurrence to output individually on our events calendar in the respective individual date. Each time the event is shown, it links to the same listing page. I am wondering if we can add event schema on a single listing multiple times to cover each occurrence. In the above example, we would have 4 schemas on the listing page for each date range/weekend. In our current schema, we end up with a start and end date identified as 9/28-10/20 but it is not clear that the event is just happening on the weekends with gaps in between. Any suggestions are welcome however, we are really trying to NOT list each as an individual event on the website both for the duplicate content issue and the extra burden on our client that lists events for a very large geographic area.0 -
Merging Niche Site
I posted a question about this a while ago, but still haven't pulled the trigger. I have a main site (bobsclothing.com). I also have a EM niche site (i.e shirtsmall.com). It would be more efficient for me to merge these site, because: I would have to manage content, promos, etc. on a single site. In other words, I can focus efforts on 1 site. If I am writing content, I don't have to split the work. I don't have to worry about duplicate content. Right now, if I enter a product URL into copyscape, the other sites is returned for many products. What makes me apprehensive are: The niche site actually ranks for more keywords than the main site, although it has lower revenue. Slightly lower PA, and DA. Niche site ranks top 20 for a profitable keyword that has about 1300 exact match searches. If you include the longer tail versions of the keyword it would be more. If I merge these sites, and do proper 301s (product to product, category to category) how likely is it that main site will still rank for that keyword? Am I likely to end up with a site that has stronger DA? Am I better off keeping the niche site and just focusing content efforts on the few keywords that it can rank well for? I appreciate any advice. If someone has done this, please share your experience. TIA
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | inhouseseo0 -
Temporarily shut down a site
What would be the best way to temporarily shut down a site the right way and not have a negative impact on SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LibertyTax1 -
Micro sites?
Hi, I have been speaking to seo firms regarding strategies and they mentioned setting up micro sites under domains that are relevant. i.e setting up armanidoamin.co.uk and we use it as a blog type site to update all info, product reviews, news relating to armani. Whats peoples thoughts on this? Does it work? Is it worth the effort? Im not so sure but obviously looking for ideas. Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | YNWA0 -
Why does a site have no domain authority?
A website was built and launched eight months ago, and their domain authority is 1. When a site has been live for a while and has such a low DA, what's causing it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | optimalwebinc0 -
Removed Site-wide links
Hi there, I have recently removed quite a lot of site-wide links leaving the only link on homepage's of some websites, since doing this I have seen a dramatic drop on my keywords, going from position 2-3 to nowhere. Has anyone else experienced anything like this, should I expect to see a return on these keywords? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul780 -
Splitting a Site into Two Sites for SEO Purposes
I have a client that owns a business that really could be easily divided into two separate business in terms of SEO. Right now his web site covers both divisions of his business. He gets about 5500 visitors a month. The majority go to one part of his business and around 600 each month go to the other. So about 11% I'm considering breaking off this 11% and putting it on an entirely different domain name. I think I could rank better for this 11%. The site would only be SEO'd for this particular division of the company. The keywords would not be in competition with each other. I would of course link the two web sites and watch that I don't run into any duplicate content issues. I worry about placing the redirects from the pages that I remove to the new pages. I know Google is not a fan of redirects. Then I also worry about the eventual drop in traffic to the main site now. How big of a factor is traffic in rankings? Other challenges include that the business services 4 major metropolitan areas. Would you do this? Have you done this? How did it work? Any suggestions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MSWD0 -
Is it possible to Spoof Analytics to give false Unique Visitor Data for Site A to Site B
Hi, We are working as a middle man between our client (website A) and another website (website B) where, website B is going to host a section around websites A products etc. The deal is that Website A (our client) will pay Website B based on the number of unique visitors they send them. As the middle man we are in charge of monitoring the number of Unique visitors sent though and are going to do this by monitoring Website A's analytics account and checking the number of Unique visitors sent. The deal is worth quite a lot of money, and as the middle man we are responsible for making sure that no funny business goes on (IE false visitors etc). So to make sure we have things covered - What I would like to know is 1/. Is it actually possible to fool analytics into reporting falsely high unique visitors from Webpage A to Site B (And if so how could they do it). 2/. What could we do to spot any potential abuse (IE is there an easy way to spot that these are spoofed visitors). Many thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | James770