Two company websites - should 1 be nofollow?
-
We are an automotive dealership that is required to keep a manufacturer appointed website. It's pretty terrible so we are having a new site developed in addition to that. We plan on transferring our current domain name to the new site but I am not sure what to do with the older, less useful site. Should I try to have both sites appear in the search results to capture more traffic? Or is that inefficient? Should I make the new site no follow?
-
Alan is right. I'll only add that you'll really want to look through the links he provided. Local SEO is a related, but very different animal than regular SEO.
Also, unless I missed an important detail, you may want to look into canonicalizing the manufacturer's site to your own site, assuming you don't care whether the manufacturer's site appears in the SERPS.
-
Ah well don't you just love terms and conditions?
I'm going to offer my own opinion here - others may see things differently...
If you are allowed to maintain a 2nd site, then that is what I would definitely recommend doing - focusing all your attention on the new site. Not doing any no-follow or blocking for search engines.
Why? Because as much as you may get traffic to the MFR linked site, and having a link from the MFR IS a good thing, without the ability to present the image, the message or the experience you want to convey, you're at the mercy of their marketing ability. And as you've described, the low volume of traffic you currently get seems to indicate a not-so-savvy ability.
Here's the difficulty though - you're essentially starting from scratch with the new site. So you're going to need to pull out all the stops.
High quality unique content is vital, of course. Local optimization on-site, backed by maximized off-site local SEO, social media and link-building are going to be what make the long-term difference though. If done properly, you should see your preferred site show up consistently in location based search results.
And then if the MFR site happens to show up, so be it. Unfortunate to need to deal with, yet a necessary evil in this case. More important is to push the site you control so you can have as much control over your message as possible.
Here's a few resources for local optimization
-
Hi Alan, thanks for the reply.
The manufacturer appointed website is one that we are required to maintain. We have very minimal control over look, feel, and content but we have enough control to customize it a bit (including access to the of the code).
The existing site will get assigned a new domain name of our choosing. We are not required to use a domain that the manufacturer chooses.
We are not required to use the manufacturer site as our primary site; however, the manufacturer will only link to the site that they provide from their parent site. This will be the sole reason we even care about that site. We literally don't have to do any maintenance whatsoever to the manufacturer site in order to keep it running. Fortunately, we don't get too much traffic from them so all of our marketing channels will direct people to the newer site.
-
I'm not sure what you mean by "a manufacturer appointed website". Does this mean you have no choice but to maintain a site they provide and where you have no control over it's look, feel, or content?
If you are planning on setting up a new domain and transferring your current domain name to that, what domain name would the existing site have? A 2nd newly obtained domain name? Or one available through the MFR?
Are you required by the MFR to use their provided site as your primary forward-facing promotional point of contact on the web?
These are all important points to help determine how you proceed.
If you make the new site nofollow, what would you use the new site for?
Having the need to maintain / promote two separate sites is always more challenging than focusing all your efforts on one site and really should be avoided at all costs if possible.
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
-
Moz crawler is not able to crawl my website
Hi, i need help regarding Moz Can't Crawl Your Site i also share screenshot that Moz was unable to crawl your site on Mar 26, 2022. Our crawler was not able to access the robots.txt file on your site. This often occurs because of a server error from the robots.txt. Although this may have been caused by a temporary outage, we recommend making sure your robots.txt file is accessible and that your network and server are working correctly. Typically errors like this should be investigated and fixed by the site webmaster.
Technical SEO | | JasonTorney
my robts.txt also ok i checked it
Here is my website https://whiskcreative.com.au
just check it please as soon as possibe0 -
Faq problem in wordpress website
hi hi i add script faq in my site but doest show in serp and add moudle ithink may be problem in version wordpress or theme not stable ... my site url is https://giftmax.ir example when i search" خرید گیفت کارت" my competitor show faq script but my site doesnt show please help to resolve this problem thanks moz
Technical SEO | | ahmad21aga0 -
Website Revision
Hi all~ We are completely remaking our website: www.containmydog.com. I believe we have a good handle on the visual aspects of the redesign. What are the backend or behind the scenes (probably not using the technical term) things that need to be done so search engines know where things are. For example i know we are not going to remove some pages , change were some pages are on the site and add new pages. Is there a checklist that lists the important things to do when designing/redesigning a website? If there is not a checklist what are the things I should be asking the web person we hire?
Technical SEO | | PhotographerSteve1 -
My website is not avaliable, will i lose ranking?
My website was not available during 12 hours and i think that i will lose ranking by that. What do you think about it? Will i lose rankings? Some URL were lost during the drop of server, what should i do? Create again? Delete on GWT? Thanks so much.
Technical SEO | | pompero990 -
Is this nofollow tag written wrong?
I'm doing a link audit and came across this nofollow tag: [http://www.jampaper.com/Envelopes](<a class=)">www.jampaper.com/Envelopes Does it matter that the nofollow tag is at the front? Shouldn't it after the URL?
Technical SEO | | jampaper0 -
My beta site (beta.website.com) has been inadvertently indexed. Its cached pages are taking traffic away from our real website (website.com). Should I just "NO INDEX" the entire beta site and if so, what's the best way to do this? Please advise.
My beta site (beta.website.com) has been inadvertently indexed. Its cached pages are taking traffic away from our real website (website.com). Should I just "NO INDEX" the entire beta site and if so, what's the best way to do this? Are there any other precautions I should be taking? Please advise.
Technical SEO | | BVREID0 -
2 websites 1 Google account?
quick question, I have set up my second website purely for seasonal stock so getting it online early ready for when the time is right. But i only have a single web master tools & ad words account, would there be any problem with the single accounts having the details for both websites? or would it be wise to have separate accounts for each site?
Technical SEO | | GarethEJones0 -
Website IP Location
My main target audience is in the UK, but my website's IP is in the United States. Would it be worthwhile to change the IP to a UK address? How would I go about that? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | theLotter0