Manufacturer, New Direct-to-Consumer Site (Separate Site, or Sub-Domain?)
-
Hi All!
Working with an established manufacturer, been around for many years, it's an internationally known brand, and their products are sold by thousands on distributors. They recently started a new website (separate from their old established B2B manufacturer site) which will be used to sell direct to customer. The new site is great, with a nice responsive design, clean look, flexible, etc. The problem is, it's a new site with low Domain Authority.
The manufacturer's B2B site has been around a while, very high Domain Authority. So, I'd like to be able to harness all the link equity they've build instead of trying to optimize a brand new site. The problem with this old established site is that it IS in fact old. The design is terrible, it's not responsive, old code, bad look and feel, etc.
We could incorporate the new B2C site (which has its own CMS) into a sub-domain, like store.site.com. But, I'd worry that site.com's crapiness will limit growth potential for the new pages at store.site.com. Same issue were we to add the new site into a sub-folder, like site.com/store/.
On the other side, we could just keep the new site, with it's own domain, sitestore.com, and have product pages and/or category pages from the manufacturer's B2B site link to the relevant pages on the new B2C site.
Thanks!
-
Thanks for the responses. Yes, we are worried about too much interlinking and that being seen as manipulative.
I do think we're leaning towards a completely separate domain. I'll just have to be careful with the links.
-
You don't have a benefit with a new domain or subdomain at the start (without some myth I never saw) - but in future: a link of a former new domain to the old B2B site would be worth more, than a link from a subdomain or folder. Its a benefit for the old B2B site (when u link to it and that will happen several times) - the new B2C site is hard work
-
Andreas is right—the subdomain will be considered a new site by the search engines, so you won't get any SEO benefit from the existing domain. I'm not aware of any benefit you'd have a a totally new domain over a new subdomain, either, but Andreas may be able to give more information on that.
-
A: Subdomain: I think to take the subdomain is pretty useless - it is just like a new domain. May be worther (internal links b2b-b2c)
B: Subfolder: Of course you have a bonus in that case, the growth potential shouldn't be limited that much, as long as you won't chose the old CMS (you wrote that you wont).
A new site: I would try that way (but that is my liking). I would Link both sites to each other where ever (natural and relevant) possible. The way for the B2C site is long, in both ways B or C, but in case C, you can link back to the B2B site, so the old site can benefit. There are so many opportunities. I think it should be also possible to link them sitewide, I guess Google wouldn't see that as a manipulative linkbuilding. To much fear? Ask John Mueller in a webmaster hangout for his best practice tipps.
ok, that would be my choice. But one thing is clear, A is not really an option wich brings you in a better position from start up.
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
-
Ranking drop after new website
Hi there, I have a new client who has just had a new website built (by someone else). It was quite a major change as it was 12 years old and has just been moved to Wordpress. However although they are by and large happy with the new site, they have lost a lot of their rankings in Google. The content and menu structure is apparently identical. I told them I didn't think this was unusual but I'm not sure how easy it will be to get them ranking again. Where are they likely to be starting from? Is it a case of starting from the beginning or will there be some residual ranking capability left over? Or can they expect a full recovery over time? I was going to start by looking to see if things like tagging and meta data has been filled in (I will add the site to my Moz account) but is there any way of comparing the old site with the new for SEO purposes? Thanks so much, Sarah.
Web Design | | Frog-Marketing0 -
Migrating Magento site to Shopify Plus without dropping in SERPS
We have been looking at moving our ecommerce store www.pretavoir.co.uk from Magento to Shopify Plus. However, as we rank quite well at present we are interested in hearing experience others may have had making this change and also any advice that you may have... Also, any general comments on Shopify appreciated..
Web Design | | seanmccauley0 -
Site appears then disappears from Google
Hi, This is my first post to the Moz community. I hope someone can help me, as I'm at my wits end 🙂 Since mid to late April, my client's home page keeps dropping from Google rankings on and off on the desktop in incognito and non-incognito browsing. It seems to always be visible on mobile phones though. One day it's on page 4, the next day it's not anywhere to be found (even though some of her other pages rank). The site is here: evgeniaribinik.com I have done some blog writing (just text) for this client over the last few months, and recently she asked for some SEO help. After looking at her website, I noticed that she had a plugin called WordPress SEO on her site. She wasn't using this for the blogs, however. I don't think she did much of anything with SEO, but she did say that for the last few years, she was always on page 3 or 4 of Google. In mid/late April, she saw that she wasn't ranking at all for the keyword "boudoir photography nyc" anymore, despite a few years of ranking for it. I told her Yoast would be good to use. However, after she installed it, the same issues keep happening. Right now, she has Yoast and WordPress SEO plugins installed (I'm not sure if this is causing an issue as well). But I really can't figure out why she keeps going on and off page 4. She also asked me to optimize older blogs that she wrote herself for SEO. When I look at them, they don't have meta descriptions, good titles or good keywords. I realize this is hurting her, but why would her site be fine for years and all of a sudden not now? Thank you in advance for any help you can give me! Jill
Web Design | | lobeng770 -
Joomla! Site Returning 12000+ Duplicate Content Errors! W Image
(I do award "Good Answer" and "thumbs up" to responses as earned) I have tried to ask this question previously (maybe not correctly). I have a client that I am doing the on and offsite optimization and the MOZ report is kicking back major errors. I have examples below. They all seem to relate directly to rokecwid and ECWID. Is there ANY solution to fix this? Is this hurting the rankings Since I didn't build the site, I am having to tell the website company what to do when I need changes made to code, etc... I am also not very proficient with Joomla! and my web engineer is one of those closet coders (the best kind to have) and doesn't communicate in a way that a "layman" could understand. He pointed out several issues with the HTML but I don't think that is related to this below. Can anyone tell me what to tell the web company that built this site to get rid of these errors? A very small sample of the urls w errors:
Web Design | | Atlanta-SMO
http://www.metroboltmi.com/shop-spareparts?
Itemid=218&option=com_rokecwid&view=ecwid&ecwid_category_id=3560097
1 14 1 http://www.metroboltmi.com/shop-spareparts?
Itemid=218&option=com_rokecwid&view=ecwid&ecwid_category_id=3560098
1 1 0 http://www.metroboltmi.com/shop-spareparts?
Itemid=218&option=com_rokecwid&view=ecwid&ecwid_category_id=3560099
1 14 1 http://www.metroboltmi.com/shop-spareparts?
Itemid=218&option=com_rokecwid&view=ecwid&ecwid_category_id=3560100
1 14 1 SEOMOZErrors_zps3a1ce2a2.png0 -
Linking root and domain authority
Hi SEOMOZ community, Can you please advise on how to increase Linking root domains and domain authority. much appreciated.
Web Design | | wahin10 -
Show root domain (that is 301 redirected) in SERP?
Hi, If I have the domain name www.businessname.com.au pointing (using 301 redirect) to a particular page on a business directory site (eg www.bizdirectory.com.au/businessname), is it possible to have the URL www.businessname.com.au displayed in the Google search results rather than the destination page of www.bizdirectory.com.au/businessname? Thanks in advance,
Web Design | | blackrails
Adam0 -
What site do you admire/like for its SEO - technical, content, whatever - and why?
I am gathering examples of great SEO'd sites and would appreciate your examples. The rationale can be anything - great SEO structure, great linking, solid content - you think stands out. Thank you!
Web Design | | josh-riley0 -
What's the best was to structure Product page information on my site?
Hi - I run a hobby related niche new / article / resource site (http://tinyurl.com/4eavaj4). One of the most critical components of the site is our product database. We don't actually sell anything directly - instead we monetize them by displaying relevant affiliate product feeds and price comparisons. However since the Panda update was implemented in February my traffic (particularly my long tail, product related traffic) has dropped off considerably. I had about a 20% drop in overall traffic, but have made up some of the ground in the past week. However I want to know once and for all how I should structure my product related information as I have a ton of great content that is ready to be published in this section but want to be sure I structure it the best possible way from a SEO standpoint. Here are a few different options I've come up with for displaying information about products on my site. For the purpose of these examples I am going to refer to all of the information that makes up my product pages collectively as "product profiles". Please let me know which is the best SEO wise (or if you have a better way of doing it let me know): - Option 1 - Current Method - Divide Content Sections into different pages / urls Example: http://tinyurl.com/4tpdlbl This is how the majority of my product profiles are currently structured. I did this to improve load times and to keep the total number of links per page down. In addition to the core product profile subpages: "Product Details","Compare Prices", **"**Product Review", "Hot Auctions", and "Checklists", I have the Checklists area further segmented by subset, each of which is on its own page that is only accessible through the main Checklists tab of the profile. - Option 2 - Everything on one url / page the old fashioned way, with everything available by scrolling vertically. This would make the page go on forever though. - Option 3 - Everything on one url / page, but visually segmented using css / javascript tabs. Example: http://tinyurl.com/4kqhauh I looked at the source code and all the page text is there, so it looks like it would be spider-able but you tell me. Or would another method of tabbing be better? My site is wordpress based so the functionality comes from a plugin. - Option 4 - Use post tabs that are technically all on the same page, but make each individual tab be accessible through its own suburl, all of which share the same core canonical url. Example: http://tinyurl.com/4bs9pjs Clicking on any of the individual tabs will result in something like ?postTabs=2 being appended to the core url. Example: http://tinyurl.com/4gvgufc Any input would be greatly appreciated asap! Thanks Mike
Web Design | | MikeATL0