Similar Websites, Same C Block: Can I Get a Penalty?
-
One of my website has been heavily hit by Google's entire zoo so I decided to phase it out while building a new one.
Old website: www.thewebhostinghero.com
New website: www.webhostinghero.comNow the thing is that both websites are obviously similar since I kept the branding. They also both have content about the same topics. No content has been copied or spinned or whatever though. Everything's original on both websites. There were only 3 parts of both websites that were too similar in terms of functionalities so I "noindexed" it on the old website.
Now it seems that Google doesn't want you to have multiple websites for the same business just for the sake of occupying more space in the search results. This can especially be detected by the websites' C block. I am not sure if this is myth or fact though.
So do you think I'm in a problematic situation with this scenario?
It's getting ridiculous all you have to watch for when building a website, I'm afraid to touch my keyboard in fear my websites will get penalized!
- Sorry for my english btw.
-
It appened the same to me. I used everything disavow, link removal, everything so like you i decided to do a new website that now is ranking well and bringing me the good traffic
although it as been almost a year and in the first 6 month the old one penalized still reported better conversions
Know they are ranking almost the same on alexa, as the site as been penalized for especific keywords, and not for long tail wicht old web still on first position, but for content old web still ranking first on lots of long tail searches althought will never rank well for main keywords.
It is hard to leave an old domain with lots of years that was a reference and with good authority to one with no authority
And harder is to take all content of it.
Keep working man
Note: i have my websites propdental.com (old) and propdental.es (new) on different servers with no linking i just placed a no linking banner telling people to go to new website. I time i will plan to remove all content, but for know as i dont need it i did not remove it, and besides lots of websites as copied my content so if i change to my new site maybe i will have the content copied that was first copied from me. It is a risk i am not willing to
But with time you will see that the money from the old site will dropp as the one for the new one will rise
Best wishes
-
Sorry this is taking me so long to respond. So the first website was penalized. And you find new domain and essentially started bringing over other quality content that is fresh and has nothing to do the other site except for the three parts which we spoke about earlier right?
I would keep your posting apartment simply to be safer then be sorry. I would also not just no follow the content I would rewrite it immediately I don't know how much content you're talking about but regardless is well worth it to make shorts rewritten completely new and fresh. Do not link the websites together in any way shape or form. Even using the no follow will get you in trouble.
I'm sorry to hear that you had to go through this. And I think you're smart to do what you're doing. Do you have any interest in removing the penalty?
If so there is a tool from a company that is endorsed by Moz called http://www.removeem.com
It may help you get Google off your back. As it allows you to determine which links are malicious and then ask the webmaster if there they will delete it. Rather not the webmaster will delete it it will be all put into a recorded spreadsheet that you would then give to Google.
Showing Google that you have tried to remove the links rather their successful or not is extremely important. This cool will help you do that if you are interested in doing that at all.
http://www.removeem.com/faq.php
However I would keep them separate. I think what your separate now is doing will be fine. And then it will allow you to rebuild the website remember the content is probably not what you were penalized for. So if you were to delete the oversight once the new one gets up there in the search engines and place the content on the new site from the old site you could do that and be okay however I would go over very carefully prior to doing that. Just remember do not 301 redirect or 302 redirects to your new domain
I wish I had better news for you sincerely,
Thomas
-
It is only one of several factors Google could take into account. Same registrar owner, interlinking, shared assets etc are all factors used by Google to determine having more than one horse in the race for same keyword targets. If hosting location is the only interconnectivity you're probably alright, but if the site is completely nuked and you're phasing it out you might just want to noindex it and then you will automatically be fully compliant.
-
I left the old site there because it still brings in a little income which is essential but I don't maintain it anymore.
I didn't want to move everything over to the new domain as the old site has been penalized left and right.
My idea was to remove the old site completely once the new one starts getting traction and generating income.
-
Can I ask you why you using to websites is there one? After reviewing them they are very similar however I don't quite understand why you wouldn't put all the content onto one website?
If both target the same keywords that is fine you can have two websites that are separate sites targeting similar things however I don't understand why you would not turn them into one website if you own both of them?
-
All this information I have obtained below. Gives me a glimpse into your website.
"There were only 3 parts of both websites that were too similar in terms of functionalities so I "noindexed" it on the old website."
The part you referenced above. The three parts on both websites that are too similar I would definitely rewrite them and not worry about anything after that as long as you do not interlink and do not have duplicate content or spun you're in the clear
When Google indexes your website is able to find out who is information so much more than anything I could ever find. And it will be able to figure out who is the owner.
http://www.distilled.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Will-Critchlow-linklove-2013.pdf
http://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/the-potential-pitfalls-of-competitor-analysis/
http://www.distilled.net/blog/events/searchlove-2013/searchlove-boston-2013-day-two/
http://seogadget.com/proxy-caching-for-seo/
http://builtwith.com/thewebhostinghero.com
http://builtwith.com/webhostinghero.com
-
But what if both websites target the same keywords?
-
I don't believe that Google does not want you to have multiple sites on the same host. For instance using a different C Block yes will definitely let Google know what you're doing and who you are much more easily. However they're going to figure it out regardless of rather not you're on different Hosts not most likely there's too many other things including the Mac address on your computer and about 100 other things including your ISPs IP address
My advice would be do not just no follow the content that is too close rewrite it professionally from scratch even if it is the best description possible unfortunately it should be 100% unique and should be done regardless of where is hosted or what C Block it's come from.
I believe many successful companies and I know I myself host multiple websites on different topics somewhere similar but I'm sure I cannot link just for the sake of linking unless it is completely irrelevant and useful. I am no danger of Google penalizing me for anything because I use the same web host for multiple websites I would not worry about this unless you know you were doing something wrong.
I hope I have been of help sincerely,
Thomas
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
-
Another client copies everything to blogspot. Is that what keeps her site from ranking? Or what? Appears to be a penalty somewhere but can't find it.
This client has a brand new site: http://www.susannoyesandersonpoems.com Her previous site was really bad for SEO, yet at one time she actually ranked on the first page for "LDS poems." She came to me because she lost rank. I checked things out and found some shoddy SEO work by a very popular Wordpress webhoste that I will leave unnamed. If you do a backlink analysis you can see the articles and backlinks they created. But there are so few, so I'm not sure if that was it, or it just was because of the fact that her site was so poorly optimized and Google made a change, and down she fell. Here's the only page she had on the LDS poems topic in her old site: https://web.archive.org/web/20130820161529/http://susannoyesandersonpoems.com/category/lds-poetry/ Even the links in the nav were bad as they were all images. And that ranked in position 2 I think she said. Even with her new site, she continues to decline. In fact she is nowhere to be found for main keywords making me think there is a penalty. To try and build rank for categories, I'm allowing google to index the category landing pages and had her write category descriptions that included keywords. We are also listing the categories on the left and linking to those category pages. Maybe those pages are watered down by the poem excerpts?? Here's an example of a page we want to rank: http://susannoyesandersonpoems.com/category/lds-poetry/ Any help from the peanut gallery?
Technical SEO | | katandmouse0 -
Can the sudden addition of a new section of a website cause the site to be sandboxed?
Hi there, We have noticed a sudden drop in traffic for certain keywords. It seems to correlate precisely with a different department adding a whole new recruitment section to the site. However there doesn't appear to be any keyword cannibalization or duplicate content issues. Any ideas would be most appreciated. Thanks
Technical SEO | | Blaze-Communication0 -
Duplicate Title - Shopping Website
My website is showing with errors due to duplicate titles, these errors add up to over 150 errors. The problem is a lot of my products are similar, just in different lengths, colors etc. For example
Technical SEO | | adelemaree
http://www.ugg.org.au/en/classic-candy-short-australia-ugg-boots/48-classic-candy-short-australia-ugg-boots-blue.html
http://www.ugg.org.au/en/classic-candy-button-short-australia-ugg-boots/31-classic-candy-button-short-chocolate.html
http://www.ugg.org.au/en/classic-candy-button-short-australia-ugg-boots/28-classic-candy-button-short-black.html How can I avoid this error without having to merge all my products and colors into one page? As that would make my catalogue look too small! Thanks in advance0 -
How can something be duplicate content of itself?
Just got the new crawl report, and I have a recurring issue that comes back around every month or so, which is that a bunch of pages are reported as duplicate content for themselves. Literally the same URL: http://awesomewidgetworld.com/promotions.shtml is reporting that http://awesomewidgetworld.com/promotions.shtml is both a duplicate title, and duplicate content. Well, I would hope so! It's the same URL! Is this a crawl error? Is it a site error? Has anyone seen this before? Do I need to give more information? P.S. awesomewidgetworld is not the actual site name.
Technical SEO | | BetAmerica0 -
New website
Hello, How bad is going to be if I change my Joomla website to Wordpress? I can check the 100 best pages and redirect them to the new url with 301 but my website has 424 pages. If is this needs time, how long does it take to be in the same position? Is Google review my new website quickly? What about if I make my services more specific and the main topic is going to be smaller in pages? (Mpre social services pages vs. less pages about the main webdesign topic) I should change my website to WP but I am afraid because now I am in the 2. 🙂 Thanks! Regards,
Technical SEO | | Netkreativ
Misi0 -
Getting querystring indexed?
Hi everybody! I work with tags a lot on my photo blog but I haven't gotten Google to index one tag so far. Any tips on how to do this? Thanks / Niklas
Technical SEO | | KAN-Malmo0 -
Block url with dynamic text in
I've just ran a report and I have a lot of duplicate page titles, most of which seem to be the review page, I use Magento and my normal url would be something like blah-blahtext.html but the review url is something like blah-blahtext/reviews/category/categoryname So I want to block the /reviews url bit as no one ever leaves reviews and it's not something I will be using in the future. Also I have a dynamic navigation which creates urls that look like product-name.html?size=2&colour=14 these are also creating duplicate urls, anyway to fix this? While I'm asking, anyone any tips for Magento?
Technical SEO | | Beermonster0 -
How can I see if my website was penalize by Google?
Hello, I have a website http://digitaldiscovery.eu that I have been working for 7 months. Everything is alright in the index of the search engines like Google, Bing e Yahoo. I also have like 1000 visits a month wich is not bad for the topic Im pointing at in my country. However my pagerank insist to be on 0, and I really dont understand why. Some of the my competitors that started at the same time, already have a pagerank of 3 and they do not have the same visitors that I do. In the rank system of Alexa im climbing very fast and the visits of my website are growing. So why does the pagerank dont climb aswell?! Tks in advance, Pedro M Pereira
Technical SEO | | PedroM0