Is having two websites that sell most of the same products a good idea?
-
Hi -
Please read this in full before you answer.
I currently own a website that sells kitchen cabinets and bathroom vanities that match the kitchens. This website has been operational since Arpil 2009 and we have built good rankings over the past 3 years. The site is operated on the Volusion platform (my mistake from the beginning, but we're kind of stuck now).
We are in the process of designing a new website on the Magento platform - everything will be 100% different from look, speed, the way our customers shop, content, product skus, etc. The original plan was to keep the same domain but implement 301 redirects for subpages (subpage urls would have to change) and shut down the Volusion site and transfer the domain name to the Magento site.
Our current website does make money right now and we would hate to lose rankings (even if only temporarily) during the switch or have something go wrong. What I am now thinking is keeping our current website on Volusion where it is currently making money and having the new Magento site have a new name/domain.
The sites would sell most of the same products (the Magento site would sell more types of vanities and accessories though). The two sites would have different email addresses, phone numbers, and mailing addresses. Is it a bad idea to try and rank two websites selling pretty much the same thing? We have competitors out there that sell the same products as us, I would just prefer to compete with myself rather then someone else.
Another issue is our name, one of our competitors names is extremely close to ours and we rank for pretty much all of the same keywords and customers get us mixed up all the time. This other site would have a different name (one that makes more sense).
I want to make a decision that will not come back and bite us later. I know there are a lot of bigger sites that operate tons of niche sites, and of these website could eventually be similar to that.
I really appreciate your help and guidance!
Thanks
-
Sounds great, hopefully we provided some helpful information.
Good luck with the migration!
-
I appreciate the response George - we are going to take everything into consideration and hopefully come to a conclusion sooner then later.
Thanks again!
-
Hi Tyler,
Sorry it took a while to get back to this thread. I don't think there's one "right answer" for how to proceed and you've obviously given this much thought.
But, I can give you my point of view and what I believe to be the best answer in this situation and likely what I would do.
Personally, I would use the new name. It sounds like your business is excited about it and now you just want to maintain your rankings.
Knowing this process would involve a migration to a new website complete with a new domain name, I would start reviewing all of the steps included in the posts I provided above. Make your 301s are going to be done right and will not miss any high-ranking, high-traffic URLs.
Prior to performing the migration announce the re-branding effort on your current site and let your customers know what to expect.. Ask for feedback. Let your customers know you are making these changes to better serve them you'd love their input.
Once you've tested the new site fully and are ready to go to production, announce the date of the change and then implement. You will see fluctuations in traffic, but if you follow all of the advice in the posts above you will have the best odds for success.
Hope this helps
-
Thanks for the reply Andrea. I've also thought about our business looking "sketchy" by having two sites selling the same products - we've worked extremely hard creating a stellar reputation that I would never want to do anything to put that in jeopardy.
We've thought about completely changing our name when we switch over to the new platform but are really worried that rankings will take a hard hit if we change it completely rather then transfer the domain over. What are your thoughts on this? Our new website will much better in every aspect but we are still concerned.
Thanks
-
A slightly different way to look at it/somethings to consider: I wouldn't advocate trying to manage two sites as well as competing with competitors. Now, that's my business choice because the possible mess of the back end management/resources/content/marketing and everything to keep both sites viable and performing well. I wouldn't have the resources.
As a user, if I were researching, I'd also possibly get confused or feel slightly disconcerned if I came across both and found out it was really the same company. Also why I wouldn't advocate for it.
That said, any move can cause a possible dip in rankings and performance. That's just a risk. After an initial dip, if the CMS is better, than the site performance could be way better than what you had before. I can see why companies don't want to risk it, though. Money is money.
Ultimately, there's the decision that's best for you, with everything you mention and what George mentions, as part of your consideration.
-
I appreciate the reply George.
There has been a descent amount of marketing and branding done with our current name, which I believe has actually helped some of our competitors gain traffic because our names are so similar. Because we sell kitchen cabinets, most of our customers are 1 time buyers but we do have a stellar reputation and receive a lot of recommendations.
We are willing to essentially build this new site from the ground up if we do not implement 301 redirects (the 301 redirects would only be for subpages as some of the urls would need to change - the actual domain would stay the same) and run both sites essentially as separate businesses. I am just not sure if that is the best way to go.
Long run I can see both websites ranking well and essentially getting double the traffic - or even trying to rank for different keywords between the two sites. I just don't want to do anything to get us penalized, although I can't see that happening because we would be taking the necessary steps to not have duplicate content across both sites.
-
Hard question there Tyler. There are many things to consider.
Have you already done marketing with the old name? How many repeat customers do you get? Is your intent to rebrand?
If it makes sense to rename, rebrand, and build on a new domain name, unless you are writing new content (e.g. product descriptions), you can run into duplicate content issues if you run with two sites. Additionally, the new site will not have any reviews or other engagement which may be present in the existing site.
If the only reason for the change is to move to what you believe is a better platform and to improve the design, then it might be best to go the 301 redirect route and maintain the rankings you already have. People expect websites to change (improve) as time goes by.
Here's a good website migration guide.
Google has provided some tips too.
Hope this helps!
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
-
Search website bar
I've noticed when you search business such as Pier 1, William Sonoma, they offer a "Search william-sonoma.com" search bar within the organic search. You can see it when you google William Sonoma. So, the question is, how does that get displayed? Is it something a business can include or is it something that Google will provide if they feel the need too? Appreciate any feedback. Thanks.
Branding | | Kdruckenbrod0 -
Help! Odd SERP results on two branded terms.
We have had the ODDEST thing happen to our Branded search. Last week we started seeing our Women’s subdomain (women.duluthtrading.com) outranking our main Duluth Trading domain (duluthtrading.com) on searches for “duluth trading co” and “duluth trading company”. Sample of odd results page: http://screencast.com/t/cKgkaYc1 As you can see- our Women's sub domain is ranking #1 then our main domain, THEN what used to be our organic site links are now listing 3-6. If you search for "duluth trading" though, you will get the typically results page: http://screencast.com/t/qGLDWiM0f We have been trying to figure out how or why this has happened. Our website went out for 30 minutes on January 4th. We thought maybe that is what happened but it has now been 7 days. Any help or suggestions would be great!
Branding | | sderuyter0 -
Enhancing SEO Between WordPress Blog and Company Website
My company has recently launched a new and improved website within the last couple months. Unfortunately, the web developers that we'd hired to build and create the site work very little with SEO, thus leaving me in the dark on where to direct any questions regarding the optimization of our web content. Along with the new website design, we've also rolled out a WordPress blog related to our firm. We do have the blog embedded onto a page of our website, and clicking on any title will redirect the viewer to our WordPress blog, hosted separately from our website. My question is this--how do you suggest I drive viewers from our blog to our website, rather than vice versa? Are there any applications, widgets, etc that you could recommend that would help me better associate the blog with our company? Any advice would help. Thanks!
Branding | | LMcLaughlin0 -
Is there any downside to have a product name (branded keyword) that has a top keyword in it?
The company I work for recently purchased another company. We are currently re-branding their product into our solution offering and are working on coming up with a new product name, while keeping SEO in mind. The product names that we are thinking of also includes a non-branded keyword that we actively look to rank for. We currently rank relatively high for this keyword. Is there any negative to having a product name that has a non-branded keyword in it. My first thought is that it is great because that non-branded keyword will be used repeatedly on our site when we mention the product. Things that I don't know though are: will it appear we are keyword stuffing does Google recognize that its a branded keyword and doesn't rank us for the non-branded aspect Any feedback or ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! Vince
Branding | | IFSNA0 -
Is Google having trouble determining between two of my brand sites
I have a couple brand sites that our company uses and a couple of weeks ago one started to suddenly show up in the #1 position while searching for the other site via its brand. If I search for "collegexpress" our other site careersandcolleges.com is in the #1 possition. If I search for "collegexpress.com" it shows carrersandcolleges.com's title and description but links to www.collegexpress.com Could I have something messed up or is google confused with our two sites? In the past I am told that CollegeXpress referred to the careersandcolleges.com page but that has been there for many many years and this SERP change only started to show the first week in march of this year. I looked and there are a handfull of anchor text links from external sites using some form of the "CollegeXpress" brand linking to www.careersandcolleges.com but not that many, and they are not new. If I do a search the other way for "careersandcolleges" I see it correctly return is own site #1 but www.collegexpress.com is shown to me as #3. I checked and we dont have any redirects or mod rewrites between the two sites. They are on two different IPs Any help that can point me in the right direction would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Branding | | GeorgeLaRochelle0 -
Should your company's name be in the title tag of your website?
First of all, I would like to provide some background information. Our company is small. We are just now getting into SEO research and have been improving over a couple months of research. We are somewhere in the 500,000's in the world rankings. From what I understand, the title tag provides a great amount of weight to whatever keywords you set up. The words in the title tag are supposed to represent keywords that you want to be high in the search engines for, correct? Well, in our title tag, we have the name of our company. To me, this is a waste of space. No one is going to go to Google and search for our company's name because we are not that widely known. Looking back at our search history for customers, there has not been a single search for the company name. What someone is telling me, is that when we put our link somewhere, having the name of our company in the title tag strengthens the "link juice" we get from those links. Is this correct, or is it worth trashing the company name for another keyword to optimize?
Branding | | FrontlineMobility0 -
Need a quick simple report comparing popularity of two brand names...
CURT Manufacturing compared to Reese Products. curtmfg.com and reeseprod.com Both sell towing and trailer hitch products. What is the best approach you can recommend using the Pro tools? I perform lightweight analytics using Google Analytics, and some keyword tools here, and also Majestic SEO and Compete - but not a pro and would LOVE it if someone can give me best course direction. Thank you, M Adelman
Branding | | CURT-20817
CURT Mfg.0 -
Video's Pros and Cons - YouTube vs My website or both?
This isn't really a question per say, but more of a request for advise. We are in the process of creating videos for our travel website. They are more informational and do not promote any products as such. I am aware of the options, and I am leaning towards creating a pro account with Vimeo so that the videos are available only on our website. The reason for this is so that we can at least get credit for our work, as when they are on you tube, anybody can syndicate the video without linking to our website. I am also aware that there are allot of searches happening on YouTube, and it may be worse if we choose not to upload our videos there as we would loose out on a big audience. it would be GREAT if we had the best of both options. And i had an idea i want to get your opinions on. Create the video and upload onto our website with "lower competitive" title / meta / body. Submit the video on YouTube with a "Higher competitive" keyword / title /meta and description. When someone finds our video, they might search YouTube to avoid linking back and wont find it, (although it is there getting traffic from a similar keyword) Branding is the number 1 objective for these videos, so you tube + many other video sites would be the way to go. However, i would also like our own "private" video blog on our site so that if web masters like the video, we can give them the option of embedding it on there site (like SEOMOZ do it on there whiteboard Fridays) Your comments and suggestions will be muchly appreciated. Greg
Branding | | AndreVanKets0