Two websites vs each other owned by same company
-
My client owns a brand and came to me with two ecommerce websites. One website sells his specific brand product and the other sells general products in his niche (including his branded product).
Question is my client wants to rank each website for basically the same set of keywords.
We have two choices I'd like feedback on-
Choice 1 is to rank both websites for same keyword groupings so even if they are both on page 1 of the serps then they take up more real estate and share of voice. are there any negative possibilities here?
Choice 2 is to recommend a shift in the position of the general industry website to bring it further away from the industry niche by focusing on different keywords so they don't compete with each other in the serps.
I'm for choice 1, what about you?
-
I have came across similar situations before and I have to say that Choice 1 should be no problem at all as long as the content is fairly unique on each site. This should rule out the chance of duplicate content.
I guess it all depends on the volume, but for me I would go with choice 2. Simply because you then get to cover more spread and aren't stuck in one specific niche.
Truth is there is no right or wrong, both will work fine. It just depends on volume/competition
-
Thanks for the insight Patrick.
For many reasons the websites must remain separate, good suggestion though.
Rich
-
Hi there
I guess my main question is why two sites if you're trying to rank for the same set of keywords? Has he thought about combining? Moz has a great post on the potential benefit of combining two websites, but that's something you'll need to heavily research and chat with your client about. Here's that post.
If nothing else, more real estate sounds good to me so I would do option 1. Don't forget there are awesome Schema opportunities such as sameAs that can help you tie your properties together and help search engines understand your web presence. I would also make sure that you look into cross domain tracking so your client has a better understanding of his performance and eCommerce.
Hope this helps - good luck!
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
-
Why has my website been removed from Bing?
I have a website that has recently been removed from Bing's index, but can't figure out why. The website isn't new, and it is indexed just fine on Google. These are the steps I've tried: The website is verified in Bing Webmaster Tools and successfully submitted the sitemap. I tested the URL to ensure that Bingbot is allowed to crawl the site I submitted URLs to Bing via the URL Submission tool There isn't a "noindex" on the site preventing it from being indexed When I do a URL Inspection, an error message comes up saying "The inspected URL is known to Bing but has some issues which are preventing us from serving it to our users. We recommend you to follow Bing Webmaster Guidelines." I contacted Bing to ask whether the website was removed in error, but received a reply that the website doesn't comply with Bing's quality guidelines, but they wouldn't go into detail as to which guidelines the website isn't meeting. The website URL is https://www.pardeehospital.org. Can anyone offer any advice or insight as to why Bing won't index our site? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lindsey.steinkamp0 -
Category VS Post
I use my website for providing an international service, I made my URL structure website https://example.com/destinations/africa/country destinations is a category and Africa is a sub-category I made an article for every continent and inserted all the continent's country manually, the page url structure is https://example.com/destinations/africa/ and the continent category URL is https://example.com/category/destinations/africa/ I'm thinking about removing the continent article and strip the category Word from URL, So i will use the subcategories directly on the same link https://example.com/destinations/africa/ what's your advice about removing the continent article and using the sub categories instead? is it a good idea to use the child category as a reference for the internal links? what do you think about keeping both of them (child category and the Article)? in case you suggest to use the child category , Is removing Category word may hurt my SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | batot_mahmoud0 -
Website Migration and SEO
Recently I migrated three websites from www.product.com to www.brandname.com/product. Two of these site are performing as normal when it comes to SEO but one of them lost half of its traffic and dropped in rankings significantly. All pages have been properly redirected, onsite SEO is intact and optimized, and all pages are indexed by Search engines. Has anyone had experience with this type of migration that could give some input on what a possible solution could be? Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlexVelazquez0 -
Construction website
Hi, I have a construction website that is aimed at tradesmen. There are 2 goals of the site: 1. To allow potential customers to sign up for a trade account. 2. To allow existing customers to access to products and login to their account to make an order. The site is full of categories and products which should be indexed so we rank for these trade products. The homepage redesign is where i am having an issue: Currently the site is set up like a standard retail site but without prices, which are viewable only when logged in. The homepage is designed such that there is several call to actions about promotions, services and to apply for a trade account, that apply to both existing and potential customers. At the moment there is a poor conversion to get potential customers to apply for a trade account. This is because there is too much distraction away from this goal and they are allowed to engage other areas of the site freely. The main purpose of the homepage should be to encourage potential customers to sign up. The secondary purpose to for existing customers to access the accounts and products. I believe potential customers should not be exposed to the categories and products as it is a distraction from the primary goal. Potential customers, i.e. Tradesmen, would already have a certain understanding of the types of products we provide, so I don't feel it is necessary to allow them to crawl the rest of the site unless they have an account. What are your thoughts on that? Here is my lack of understanding: On the homepage, if I restrict access to categories and products to existing account holders only, where a login is required to proceed, would that mean Google cannot access these pages to index them? Or is this only controlled by NoFollows & Robots.txt? Obviously not indexing is undesirable. I do understand potential customers will need some information about our range of products but the idea is to coerce them to sign up for an account so they can see this information. The more information that is provided to a potential customer, the higher the probability a person can make a decision against applying for an account. Restricting access creates a motivator to reveal information and we capture their data to converse with them personally. This increases the probability of us being able to retain their interest by providing a customised service based on their needs. All of this I feel makes perfect sense to me, the only query/obstacle I have is the indexing of the site. If Google cannot index pages that are restricted by account access, then I would like suggestions to solve/compromise/optimise the above. Just to address the desired behaviour of index pages. If in search a our product page appears, the person clicking the link would either be redirected or exposed to a login or sign up screen to view. Thank you so much for your help. Antonio
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AVSFencingSupplies0 -
Splitting one page into two
Good day everyone! If you have a page that ranks well for two highly competitive, yet mutually irrelevant, terms, but that the page will be split into two as part of a website redesign, would you 301 it to term X or term Y? What criteria do you use? Are there any other things I should do to avoid the wrong page ranking for the wrong term? I don't want users searching for term X to end up in page Y. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andrep0 -
Future-proof website to optimize SEO.
Hi All, This is my first post and hopefully a question that could help others in similar positions. Say we are trying to rank for the keyword "security testing tools". Product name is "Sectest" and its a security testing tool. *We currently have an "SEO" section that is purely good content and the idea with this is to be able to rank for "security testing tools" talking about what to expect and look for in such tools and relevant content - Linking to our product page at the end of it. structure is brand.com/security-testing/tools and that would have a link to brank.com/products/sectest Obviously product pages would get their meta tags and content re-written so we don't compete for the same keywords. Is this approach optimal? or would google want us to link directly to the product page instead of "information" about security testing tools? Nobody in our sector is taking this approach and we have already started it, but I am starting to wonder if I am getting into big trouble further down the line. Thanks and best regards,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JorgeGarcia0 -
Local + National seo for a new website
Hi, Look for idea for a website owner selling training courses on painting , he wants to be ranked locally first but also national on google Serp (only one physical address available). His domain name is rather a branded one (no kw in it), and the website is recent (1 year) . An audit will be focused on competitor rankings to find niche KW. I 'd advise : - For local : optimized Google address listing + local business directories + optumized page with local emphasis (shema.org ..) For national : to make unique relevant content pages with keywords geographically targeted (according audit), for instance for a specific town, to include terms related to this particular local market etc.. 1/ What 's else could i suggest to start a national ranking ? 2/ Have you heard of a tool to make distant queries on Google ? I mean , i leave in Madrid (spain) and want to see google serp as if i was in Barcelona ? (seems difficult as google uses Ip). Tks in advance for your advices...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mlc0 -
Hiring an SEO company
I usually do SEO myself but now its time to move on to getting on with running the business. I have found a fantastic PPC company who ONLY focus on PPC and am looking for same but for SEO. Must be based in UK and have a great portfolio of mid/large tier companies with some real life stats to back them up. Pricing must be clear and transaparent. Results must be measurable. How would you find such a company? Ironically searching on Google doesn't seem to produce the right results 😞 Alastair
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | alastairc0