One Main Brand Domain - One EMD which Ranks Better
-
Hello SEO MOZers!
We have one one main ecommerce site and I have just discovered we have an EMD sitting on a .co.uk, for one of our premium product ranges, and it actually outranks our main website. It appears on page one.
My question is how do I handle the EMD? I don't want to start building authority to this site, as we are currently developing the main brand site, however I can't ignore that it is ranking.
There is relatively little content. There are links on the page (it's only one page) that go through to the product section on the main site. But should I 301 redirect it?
What would be your advise? I want to capitalise on any traffic we could benefit from, and ultimately I want the main site to rank better for this product's keywords.
Any help would much appreciated.
-
Hi Robert,
Thank you very much for the detailed reply. The main website is also based in the UK but I'm not sure about the DNS which I will check. If they are on the same DNS, are you saying that redirecting the EMD to the main brand website would contravene Google best practice and we shouldn't do it?
We have a full section for this product range on the main site so it means that there is a viable target for the 301. I just feel like we should be building up this section on the main site and making that better, rather than focusing on the other one, but unfortunately because it ranks so well (I thought Google stopped ranking websites just for the EMD), I need to do something with it!
Thank you for your advise so far. I'm really grateful to you.
Carla
-
Hi Carla,
A couple of questions to consider:
- Is the main site also operating in the UK?
If not you probably don't want to link them as there is lost relevancy unless your e-commerce service area includes the UK and wherever your main domain is targeting.
If they are both in the UK, you are good on this.
- Are the sites both hosted on the same DNS?
If so, you are risking a red flag from Google. 1 or 2 links this way won't hurt, but over time you are leaving footprints which run against Google's best practices and you are risking penalization.
- Do the main site have a page that would be a viable 301 redirect target from the UK site?
If so, you are in pretty good shape and I would consider the redirect. You will be losing some link juice in the process, but traffic will be coming to the site you prefer.
- Just how serious do you want to get about your technical SEO?
EMD's are not the be-all and end-all of SEO. In fact, if I were you, I might be looking at a way to improve the content on the .co.uk site before conducting the 301 redirect in order to boost its rankability as much as possible to give my main site as much of a boost as possible. It's all about how much you have to dedicate to it in terms of resources.
Hope these questions and answers have helped to give you some perspective into how to handle your situation. Let me know if there's anything else I can do to help!
Cheers,
Rob
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
-
URL structure of the page: Does this one need to contain the most important keyword for better SEO?
Hi everyone, I’m trying to get "air-conditioner-repair.html" to rank higher for the keyword "air conditioner los angeles". I am wondering whether or not I should change URL to "air-conditioner-los-angeles-repair.html" to get better results? Will be thankful very much for any advise you can offer!
On-Page Optimization | | kirupa0 -
Ranking well for 3 keyword phrase but not for 2?
Hi all, We have a site that sells whisky and is ranking well for a specific 3 keyword phrase for example "glendronach hielan whisky" (brand, product, type) which is great but the site isn't doing well for 2 keyword phrase for example "glendronach whisky" or "glendronach hielan". I'm a little confused as to why it wouldn't rank higher for the 2 keyword phrases given that there present in the 3 keyword phrase. Is there a massive jump between ranking well between 3 and 2 keyword phrases? If so what could anyone suggest to try and rank on the 2's?
On-Page Optimization | | Jon-S0 -
2 domain pointing to same website, how to resolve it?
My site customer has 2 domains pointing to the same site. So i have 2 domains with the same content, with problems about content duplication. How can i resolve this situation?
On-Page Optimization | | Maximilian210 -
Homepage ranking above category page, but no keywords in there! Why?
So...we have a 5 year diary product page at TOAD diaries. It's had a lot of on page treatment: keyword in title, alt text, decent copy, pictures of the product etc. Find it here - http://www.toaddiaries.co.uk/shop/5-year-diary So we rank 22nd for 5 year diary, but google sends the customer to the home page! There no mention of 5 year diaries on there. Seems ridiculous! I can't help but think we should rank better for this as it's a low difficulty term (according to keyword difficulty tool on MOZ). Any thoughts on why this might be? Oh, Google HAS indexed the 5 year diary page. Used a search operator to check that first (thanks to you guys on here:) ) Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | isaac6630 -
Can a country level domain perform well in international SEO if all the targeted keywords are related to that country domain?
Hi fellow Mozers, I am doing international SEO on Google US, UK, UAE and Saudi Arabia. All my targeted keywords have my country name in it, for example, export companies in France, best import companies in France and so on. Finally, my website has a country level domain i.e. www.xyz.co.fr _Hence, my questions are: _ 1. Is it good have a country level domain in this case or should I go TLDs? 2. Should my Google Plus page be a local business page or company page from SEO perspective? I have more than 10000 users who have +1 my website. _Thanks in advance. _
On-Page Optimization | | Abhi81870 -
One Webpage per Topic or splitting up for better reading...?
What is better from a SEO-Point of View: I am building right now a website where the principal topic is Renewable Energies. There will be a menu listing all kinds of Energy-types: Biogas CSP Biomass etc. And now my question: Each Topic has about 800-1000 Words of unique content with sub-topics. I think its certainly good to have for each energy type one separate page. But I think its no a good Idea to split also the subtopics up to further sub-pages like: www.energy.com/renewable-energies-biomass.html www.energy.com/renewable-energies-biomass-eficiency.html www.energy.com/renewable-energies-biomass-market.html www.energy.com/renewable-energies-biomass-industries.html as 1000 Words on one page may look like better higher quality content than making 3-4 pages with just 200 Words... talking about Biomass, but from several points of views. So I think its better to put all about Biomass on one single-page and use a menu just to jump to the subtopics via anchor-tags. Right? 🙂 Thanks Kate and Charles! Meanwhile I found out whats the right term for my question: "Pagination" I read about using the rel="next" and rel="prev" attribute when paginating an article over different pages.
On-Page Optimization | | inlinear
MY DOUBT: Sometimes you see single page paginated by using javaScript that hides text although all is in the page source, for better reading. Does Google like that or might think it could be hidden text with spamming purpose? So I think using old school "named anchors" to divide text into topics (for text about 1000 words) is better than using javaScript that reaveals text via pagination or expand collapse.0 -
Is It better to have a blogroll style Homepage to your website? or one main post?
Does a site rank better or is it better to have a blogroll style homepage linking to all of your other post in your website. Or is it better to have one homepage post for the main keyword theme of the website, with the other post titles in a side column?
On-Page Optimization | | nyphenom0 -
What is important for page rank?
I have heard quality is the most important factor for page rank but after the 7 Nov 11 PR update I am no longer a believer. The PR on my home page dropped from 4 to 3 and the rest of my inside pages remained the same even though I have added a significant amount of content since the previous update and kept it fresh. Any thoughts on this most recent PR update?
On-Page Optimization | | casper4340