A Tale of Two (Competing) Domains
-
Bit of a weird one but I'm hoping someone can help our team of two sort it out. I'm a copywriter/marketer who's been learning SEO on-the-go, along with our web developer, for the past ~9 months.
We've inherited what I consider to be a mess of a situation involving two main e-commerce sites. The company has a sporadic history of spinning off brands, in hopes to either build business in a new market or sell the brands off or what-have-you. The original company rose to prominence manufacturing disc packaging and selling it to software companies, which has obviously been on the way out for some time now. So they've dipped into a handful of other business products for marketing/office use.
The company used to sell all products, in individual AND box quantity, on one site (since 1996). In 2012 they decided to move individual quantity sales to a different site with the domain name of one of the brands, focus it more on consumers and small business, etc. We have more flexibility to make changes to the consumer site, so in my opinion it's in better shape.
The consumer site (DA 39) offers "retail pricing" with flat rate shipping and free shipping over $25. The b2b site (DA 37) offers "industry pricing" with a weight-based shipping model. Traffic on the business site is down 70% since 2010. We've also been asked to take certain products down in hopes that viewers will pick up the phone and buy a customized version from a sales rep instead.
Since probably 3/4 of the products are on both sites, nearly all the category and product pages are competing in SERPs. Not only that, but the business site's product pages invariably link to the corresponding page on the consumer site -- hundreds of links pointing to the consumer site. We know for a fact that people are price checking product+shipping between our own two sites.
The issues are further exacerbated because we have even more spinoff domains -- an informative site for a particularly successful product line, an e-commerce site just for vinyl products, etc. etc.
So I guess I'm trying to figure out how to make the most of the situation we're now in. Our hands are somewhat tied because we're not 'decision makers'. But we've got a meeting tomorrow to talk about the future of one of the sites, so I figure I at least want to be informed. I am concerned about making further decisions without considering the consequences, especially when our bonuses are tied to web sales...
I feel like this is just scratching the surface of the problem so let me know if you guys have further questions.
-
I tried to confirm that example and came up short. Were you able to?
This is so funny to me because I've literally had this exact same argument at executive meetings. I've lived this nightmare!
It doesn't matter that the two brands target different verticals. What matters is the product, as you've pointed out. You can target different verticals from the same domain. But competing domains are a no-no.
I would go back to focusing on how beneficial it would be to combine these. Try the concept of subdomains with them. So have a parent brand let's call it just that, 'parent.'
Then you will have your consumer vertical and your smb vertical, right? so you can go consumer.parent.com and smb.parent.com -- Have them branded differently but not violate Google guidelines while still bettering your SEO situation and improving DA/organic traffic and visibility.
Does that pitch make sense at the high level I threw it? Could you run with that?
I'd track down their examples also as that doesn't sound right to me. My CEO threw me examples and I shot them down on the spot when this happened to me.
Don't give up! You know you're right
-
Wasn't a total bust except for the following:
"One site is a for a lifestyle brand that sells to consumers, the other sells packaging to businesses ('but product overlap!' I say). The Limited sells Victoria's Secret and Bath and Body Works on separate sites. If they didn't they'd just be JC Penney."
-
You're absolutely right. As I said, I've gone down this exact same road before and that's exactly what was asked of me. My response was that Google has beefed up their penalty policies, reference eBay, BMW, and so on (big brands are not immune), and that you do seem to have a penalty already hitting you.
The site ranking drop in particular: Have you looked at your GWT to see if there are any manual notices? If it's a penalty and you need to submit a reconsideration request, that's your opportunity. Tell them that when you do that they will be going over your site with a fine-tooth comb. (Again this may be stretching the truth but we have to get them to understand what we know to be correct.)
The best course of action in this conversation that will be 100% truth is to explain how merging the brands will benefit your SEO. Explain that you can incorporate different vertical targets within the same domain and create content more finely tuned for each. Come up with a specific site map and present it in a purdy picture. domain.com/vertical-target etc
Show what it will look like and then explain how having all your backlinks pointing to one domain will benefit the domain and company and help you to outrank your competitors rather than spreading it out between two. This should sell them more than the penalty fear.
Good luck!
-
Thanks for the response. Seems like my question is really more of a "dealing with executives" type deal than anything technical. I think having the Google Webmaster guidelines as evidence will be helpful, though I can already hear the refutation: "We've been doing it since well before you got here, so why would we get in trouble for it now?"
I think my silver bullet will have to appeal more to whether something will lead to making more/less money (SEO implications be damned).
Maybe I can successfully suggest moving the consumer site into a subdomain of the business site and only keeping the consumer-focused items on the subdomain... but then there's still two shopping carts, two designs, and so on. It's a mess.
-
You need to combine these sites into one authoritative domain. You've spread yourselves thin, not to mention are most likely in violation of Google's guidelines.
Forgetting about the latter for a moment, think about the split domain authorities between your two prominent sites. Wouldn't it be nice to have those combined? (Of course keep in mind 1+1 will not equal 2 here, but you get my point.)
If you look through Google's webmaster guidelines you will see the part about having multiple domains selling/promoting the same product or service. That is what you are doing. There's a good chance one or both of your sites gets banned from SERPs if Google finds out about this.
It is also just going to be so much easier to create content, market, and SEO for one singular domain. You can attack different verticals from it, you can redirect everything (via 301 unless you have penalties that will carry) back to it, and continue your strategy to gain new markets. But competing with yourself isn't doing you any favors. You're absolutely correct to question the logic here.
I've fought this battle before and it's not an easy one. CEOs are not easily convinced that starting multiple brands is a bad idea. They have a funny way of reasoning it. However, you need to assert your knowledge. That is what they hired you for.
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
-
Domains and Domain Authority
Looking for some advice 🙂 I have a domain that has been registered since 1999 and currently hosts my website - the problem is that my business has moved in a different direction and my URL is no longer associated with my main product offering. For example in the past I was xyzgarden.com however now something like xyzhomedecor.com is much more appropriate. How should I handle this so that I am not at a disadvantage for SEO. thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MainstreamMktg0 -
Duplicate content across different domains
Hi Guys, Looking for some advice regarding duplicate content across different domains. I have reviewed some previous Q&A on this topic e.g. https://moz.com/community/q/two-different-domains-exact-same-content but just want to confirm if I'm missing anything. Basically, we have a client which has 1 site (call this site A) which has solids rankings. They have decided to build a new site (site B), which contains 50% duplicate pages and content from site A. Our recommendation to them was to make the content on site B as unique as possible but they want to launch asap, so not enough time. They will eventually transfer over to unique content on the website but in the short-term, it will be duplicate content. John Mueller from Google has said several times that there is no duplicate content penalty. So assuming this is correct site A should be fine, no ranking losses. Any disagree with this? Assuming we don't want to leave this to chance or assume John Mueller is correct would the next best thing to do is setup rel canonical tags between site A and site B on the pages with duplicate content? Then once we have unique content ready, execute that content on the site and remove the canonical tags. Any suggestions or advice would be very much appreciated! Cheers, Chris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jayoliverwright0 -
Parking page for domain names
Hi all, I represent a hosting company which has thousands of domain names that is parked for the clients until they start using them. Currently we are presenting the client and visitors information about the situation in the top of the pages and we have placed information about all the main products in the last part of the page. You can see an example here:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | proisp-no
http://prodesign.no/ Would you recommend utilizing these pages in a better way than how we are doing today (SEO wise towards our own website)? We have the ability to instantly change all of these pages at once and we are also able to present different pages for every single parked domain name if we want to. Best regards,
Jon0 -
Two websites vs. one for SEO
I recently met with a new potential client who currently has two websites for his business - one that is for the business as a whole and another that is specific to one of his particular services (his main service and what the overall business is known for). My first question was "why do you have two websites?" His response was that he has had a really hard time ranking well organically for his main service. He worked with an SEO company for two years and never was able to establish a solid organic presence for searches related to his main service - so he went ahead and had a site built to focus specifically on that service with the hope that it would help him rank organically for searches related to that service. The new site was built very recently (Dec. 2014) and it hasn't had a lot of optimization work put into it. The original site has a much higher Domain Authority, more incoming links, etc. My typical preference has always been to use one website and drive all traffic to that site, while building out specific content for any products/services on individual pages of the site. For some reason I'm torn as to what to do with this particular situation since his main concern is ranking for his core service, which hasn't happened with the original site. I'm concerned, though, that optimizing and managing two websites will be less effective than driving all of the traffic to one site, and that it could actually be detrimental overall. What are your thoughts? Suggestions? Feel free to let me know if you need any more details.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | garrettkite0 -
Should we move a strong category page, or the whole domain to new domain?
We are debating moving a strong category page (and subcategory, product pages) from our current older domain to a new domain vs just moving the whole domain. The older domain has DA 40+, and the category page has PA 40+. Anyone with experience on how much PR etc will get passed to a virgin domain if we just redirect olddomain/strongcategorypage/ to newdomain.com? If the answer is little to none, we might consider just moving the whole site since the other categories are not that strong anyway. We will use 301 approach either way. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Durand0 -
Move webshop domain to the brand domain?
Hello, A client of mine has a brand with a website for over 10 years now.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Seeders
About 4 years ago the have opened a webshop on an other domain (like www.brandnamewebshop.com). At this moment the brand domain has a seomoz authority of 45.
The webshop domain authority is 25. The question:
Would it not be better to transfer the webshop to the brand domain because of the domain authority? If so, how can this be done the best way? With a 301?
I also think: what a loss of energy of building the authority on the other domain.
Is it an idea to use both domains for a webshop and rewrite the content? Or is there an other way to still make use of the built up domain authority? Would it really help the other domain when I make a 301 redirect (and make use of the pointing links to the webshop domain?). I hope somebody have some experience with this...
Looking forward to the possibilities! Gerjan0 -
Keywords in domains losing power
One of my clients received a letter from another seo company touting for business. I would be interested in hearing what your opinion is on this fellow SEO providers. Letter attached - > letter.jpg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | onlinemediadirect0 -
Content on New Domain or Sub Directory of Existing Domain?
I have a client with a well aged, high DA site. They rank well for their wedding photography business in several cities. They are launching a new service which is related to photography (photobooths and flipbooks) which they built and developed content on a new domain. The existing domain has 0 links with a DA of 1. The site is brand new.. Is there any drawback to moving the existing content on the new domain to a sub directory of the high authority domain? EX: http://domain.com/newcompany The look, feel, and design of the new site / service is much different than the high DA site. My thoughts are that this will give them an automatic step up, especially since they will be marketing this in several major cities. Also, since the design will be different, if it is good to move to the subdir, should we put the new company name in the subdir folder or something keyword friendly like domain.com/photobooth as opposed to domain.com/newcompanyname. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | itrogers0