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.
We have two different websites with the same products and information, will that hurt our rankings?
-
We have two different domains, one for the UK and the other for the US, they have the exact same products, categories and information. (the information is almost the same in 400 products)
We know that Google could recognize that as duplicate content, but will that actually hurt our rankings in both sites?
Is it better if we create two completely different versions of the content on those pages?
-
Apologies if I am jumping in, but I just wanted add something to the mix. I also have a very similar situation and I posted this question on this forum earlier today. So I was wondering, does it not matter that each website has geographic targeting for different countries on Google Webmaster? For example, we have a brochure website, and we are selling the same service in multiple countries. It make sense to have country specific domains. And it is very difficult to describe the same product 3 different ways. It just doesn't make sense. However, are you saying that the sites would need to have unique content or different content from each other even though their geographic targets are set to different countries.
By the way my sites are starting small with around 10 pages each.
-
For your case I recommend two possible solutions. The first one: write unique descriptions of your products. The second one: set up canonical urls from one domain on another, for example from uk domain to us domain. It will be the sign for Google that content on uk domain is duplicate and original on us domain. Of course your uk domain will not rank well, but you will avoid duplicated content problems. As you see much better solution will be just write unique content. And it will give you more freedom for domain targeting and will be much more smarter solution.
-
Definitely better to create unique content for each site. It doesn't have to be 100% (but the more unique the better)
If you don't already, I would follow Google WMT on YouTube. Matt Cutts just did a video on this.
Here's another video from a few months ago talking about unique content for e-commerce sites.
Personally, if you have the same content on both sites and nothing separates one another, you'll have a hard time ranking them. You aren't helping Google's users by providing good, fresh content. Google doesn't know you aren't a fly-by-night site and therefore won't rank you. If that was the case, I would just copy any site ranking for my keywords and I could rank too. It doesn't work that way.
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
-
Should I optimize the login page? Will it affect the website SEO ranking?
I'm trying to resolve the site crawl issues that we have on our website. One of the links that has different issue types together is our login page. Currently we have two login pages that have the same content but different sub domains. **However I'm wondering if optimizing SEO on our login pages affects our website SEO ranking and if it's something better to do or not. ** To point out the details of the issues, the issue types that the logins pages have are "duplicate title", "duplicate content", "missing H1", "missing description", "thin content", "missing canonical tag" I'd appreciate your help, thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kaylie0 -
Can I use duplicate content in different US cities without hurting SEO?
So, I have major concerns with this plan. My company has hundreds of facilities located all over the country. Each facility has it's own website. We have a third party company working to build a content strategy for us. What they came up with is to create a bank of content specific to each service line. If/when any facility offers that service, they then upload the content for that service line to that facility website. So in theory, you might have 10-12 websites all in different cities, with the same content for a service. They claim "Google is smart, it knows its content all from the same company, and because it's in different local markets, it will still rank." My contention is that duplicate content is duplicate content, and unless it is "localize" it, Google is going to prioritize one page of it and the rest will get very little exposure in the rankings no matter where you are. I could be wrong, but I want to be sure we aren't shooting ourselves in the foot with this strategy, because it is a major major undertaking and too important to go off in the wrong direction. SEO Experts, your help is genuinely appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MJTrevens1 -
Cross Linking two related ecommerce websites
Hi Guys, Hope you'll be able to help me with a technical problem I am facing right now. We are a company right ? We own 2 webistes. Let's say one sells car parts, the other one buys second hand car parts to refurbish them and sell them. (It is not our case, just an example very similar to ours). sellparts.com buyparts.com Both are ecommerce websites, with large catalogues (7000 skus). sellparts sells a lot and is a big actor in its market. buyparts.com doesn't work nad has a really low DA. My new SEO external consultant, which I am not too convinced about, is telling me to cross link the sites on product level using cross-linking extensions. He want have them do-follow. That would mean having hundreds or thousands of links with really similar linking patterns. buy [parts] [model ] [make] sell [parts] [model ] [make] That to me seems a bit too much and I am worried it compromises the sellparts site's SEO. So should i no-follow the links ? Or do it differently ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kepass0 -
Ranking 1st for a keyword - but when 's' is added to the end we are ranking on the second page
Hi everyone - hope you are well. I can't get my head around why we are ranking 1st for a specific keyword, but then when 's' is added to the end of the keyword - we are ranking on the second page. What could be the cause of this? I thought that Google would class both of the keywords the same, in this case, let's say the keyword was 'button'. We would be ranking 1st for 'button', but 'buttons' we are ranking on the second page. Any ideas? - I appreciate every comment.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Brett-S0 -
Will multiple domains from the same company rank for the same keyword search?
I'm trying to convince people that we need good marketing reasons for starting multiple domains, as it will be more difficult to rank multiple sites. Does anyone know if Google actively discourages multiple domains from the same company appearing in the search results for the same keyword? We are creating a separate content website which is related to an existing company website. Would you agree that is best to have these sites on one domain with the content site on a sub-domain perhaps? I'm worried about duplication of effort and cross-keyword targeting in particular. These sites would not have duplicate content.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RG_SEO0 -
Best practice for duplicate website content: same root domain name but different extension
Hi there I have a new client who has two websites: http://www.bayofislandsteambuilding.co.nz
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | turnbullholdingsltd
http://www.bayofislandsteambuilding.org.nz They are the same in every regard apart from the domain extension (.co.nz & .org.nz) which is likely to be causing them issues with Google ranking given the huge amount of duplicate content. What is the best practice approach to fixing this? Normally, if I was starting from scratch, I would set one of the extensions as an alias which redirects to the main domain. Thanks in advance. Laurie0 -
Will changing a subdirectory name negatively effect local ranking?
We submitted a group of 50+ franchise stores into UBL to fulfill directory listings back in September. We are now looking at changing the some of the URL structure to include city names. Example: website.com/store/store-name(not city) to website.com/location/city-store-name Will changing the subdirectory and resubmitting to the directory aggregators negatively effect their search results? Thanks, Jake
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AESEO0 -
Why do SERP Results ( Rankings ) differ from country to country ?
Hi, I have been doing seo for this client based in Sri lanka for almost 8 months now. Since we started SEO we had set up geographic target setting to UK through google webmaster tools. At the moment Site is completely ranking higher on google uk & other countries except Sri Lanka . On Google.lk site doesn't even come within 1st 5 pages for keywords which are ranked on1st page in other countries ? What do you think about this ? How does it happen ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pyxle0