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
-
When products are discontinued- best way to handle pinned or googled images
What do you lose by deleting a product and it's images from an e-commerce site? We have many product images with pinterest pins and shares or that show up on google images searches. Our site is an active American craft gallery with jewelry, art and handmade gifts from about 300 different artists. Most products are made in small quantities others are 1 of a kind. So we often have products selling out. Most items are organized by artist. Are there good practices to follow that will best keep our social media presence and links? I'd also like to stop buying extra space for all those images on my server Thanks so much Stephen
Branding | | stephenfishman0 -
What is the best SEO friendly way to combine two websites.
I have two websites, eg: widgets.com - sells expensive widgets as gifts everydaywidgets.com - sells cheap widgets for everyday use. I would like to combine them both under the widgets.com domain name, because its easier to run the SEO campaign for one rather than two. But i still want two different product collections, and two different sites. widgets.com is by far the larger of the two sites so my current thought is to have that the main landing site, and have a button at the top to take the user to widgets.com/everydaywidgets where they have a similar but different site, and different products. I can set this all up no problem with the correct 301 redirects from everydaywidgets.com, but is it SEO friendly? Does anyone know of a real world example of a business doing this? Cheers
Branding | | SEOhmygod0 -
If other people copy your content, is really GOOD or BAD for SEO ?
Hi MOZ friends. Last week, when i was following up the backlinks linking to my domain, i detect that a new website from an unknown administrator copies the content of an entire section of my website. The administrator of that webpage did not remove the internal links on the post, so i could find.
Branding | | NachoRetta
My website has a better domain and page authority and we focus every day on create new content, but when we found people that only copy content from another, i feel disappointed. But then I got to thinking that could be good that people copy our content, although they did not quote us. If they do not remove the links either by mistake or on purpose, we receive new backlinks. ¿What do you think about this? ¿Is really good that a website copy our content? If they remove all backlinks, Is risky that Google detects that the content owner is another? ¿What do you do in this cases?1 -
Adwords alternative for beauty products
I was wondering if anybody knew of a good display network group for beauty products/anti-aging/wellness Adwords is doing okay but we would like to expand to other networks.
Branding | | Atomicx0 -
What is the best way to market/raise awareness about new clothing products?
We are an Outdoor Clothing Company that designs our own range. We primarily sell through Retailers & distribution networks, but around 2 years ago went online. We update our collections twice a year, and we really struggle to get attention and awareness of our new designs. Can anyone recommend the best practice for getting newly launched products successfully "marketed"?
Branding | | Target-Dry0 -
Re-code website and start from scratch?
Hi Community, one of my sites was affected by panda penguin and then EMD updates last year. All our google 1st page rankings were lost and we have spent the last few months trying to recover the situation. Changed content, meta tags, meta titles, disavowed links, changed navigation structure among other things. We are now at a point where we are thinking of scrapping the whole thing and re-coding the site. Before we make the decision I wanted to ask what the main risks and points are that we need to consider. Are there any useful guides to help us make an informed judgment? Also, if we were to re-do the site and also change the domain name what are the implications of this and what needs to be considered. I'd really appreciate some advice as this is a major step for us. Thanks
Branding | | BipSum0 -
Which industry has the HIGHEST % of awful looking websites! ??
I have an auto upholstery client that wants a new website and some SEO work done here locally. I take to Google to check out the competition in some other states to get a feel for whats other sites are doing and I just spent 30 minutes looking at 53 different websites and I swear not a one of them is worth $20 Have you run into any industries that historically have terrible websites? Have a great Christmas everybody! Matthew
Branding | | Mrupp440 -
The Franchise Challenge: How should I handle 200 franchisee websites?
Hi all.. this is not a question about how this can be done but which is better for SEO. Franchises make up 8% of the USA small business market. This is no small potatoes. But everything about Google seems designed for the unique, stand-alone business (Places, Analytics, Adwords, Duplicate Content Rules, etc.) ... I think about this issue a lot so wanted to put it to the community. Imagine a franchisor with 200 locations. This company licenses its brand and business operations system - that's what a franchise is. So each local franchisee starts out with a "content ready" website template which they are required to use for brand compliance. (Each local franchisee has a Google Place page and a Local Website in their territory.)Assuming each solution has the same number of local citations around 50% duplicate content on its services pages (e.g. branding text)... which of the following does Google like best? A single, customized CMS (e.g. Drupal) which places each franchisee site in a subfolder of the TLD. Highly duplicated services pages are given canonical pointers to the main site's version.
Branding | | scottclark
domain.com/location A single, customized CMS (e.g. Drupal) which places each franchisee in a subdomain of the TLD. Highly duplicated services pages are given canonical pointers to the main site's version. location.domain.com A multi-manager dashboard (e.g. ManageWP) which operates an individual Wordpress installs on a single server (dedicated self-install server, sites share IPs)
_localdomain.com _ A multi-manager dashboard which operates an individual Wordpress install on multiple, diverse servers (e.g. shared hosting on diverse hosts.)
localdomain.com I know that the best case would be for each franchisee individually to be so motivated to set up their own site and properly use brand elements, get links, etc. but this is impractical (trust me.)~~~~~~(*update 4/4/13 - I have written a blog post which describes what I think is the ideal franchise web marketing & SEO program and would welcome additional comments!)0