1st Ecommerce site got penalized, can we start a 2nd one?
-
Hello,
A client's first site got penalized by Goolge Penguin. It has recovered through cleaning up backlinks, but not to where it was before. It is 2nd and 3rd for several money keywords, but is far less successful than before penalization.
We are starting a second site. Here's the important steps to mention
The new site shows up first for it's domain name, and it has 30 pages indexed. It shows up NOWHERE for our leading search term. Out other site has a blog post that is 3rd for that search term.
We are using new categories and new organization.
We are using a different cart solution
We are adding all unique content
The home pages and some of the product pages are very thorough. We are adding comprehensive products like nothing else in the industry (10X)
We plan on adding a very comprehensive blog, but haven't started yet.
We've added the top 100 products so far. Our other store has 500.
There's a lot of spam in the industry, so sites are slow to rank.
Our category descriptions are 500 words
Again, all unique content. No major errors in Moz Campaign tools
Just a few categories so far, we're going to add many more.
Same Google Analytics account as our other site
It looks like we should eventually be on page 3 for our major search term. Again, we're nowhere for anything right now.
...
Have you seen that Google will not rank a second site because it's from the same company and Google Analytics account, or does Google let you rank 2 sites in the same industry? We are hoping it's just slow to rank.
If you can rank 2 sites, what are your best recommendations to help show up?
Thanks.
-
If you launch a duplicate site, Google will sniff it out and neither site will rank because they will treat them as one site with duplicate content. I had an issue like this for 2 legitimate sites with the same content and different brands. When we went with cross domain canonicals, we started ranking in a big way.
Without improving Backlinks, Content Quality and UX, your site will not achieve it's old rankings. The site was getting ranked because of link spam, and when those links spammy links go bye-bye your rankings go with them.
With the new "kinder & gentler" penguin, stick to 1 site and focus on making the current site awesome and acquiring high quality backlinks.
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
-
Can anyone suggest good keywords for this
hello everyone, can you please suggest Good Keywords for my client domain www.amojobs.com. Any one can help please ?? my client Need it urgent.. Thanx in advance
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | poojathakar0 -
The use of a ghost site for SEO purposes
Hi Guys, Have just taken on a new client (.co.uk domain) and during our research have identified they also have a .com domain which is a replica of the existing site but all links lead to the .co.uk domain. As a result of this, the .com replica is pushing 5,000,000+ links to the .co.uk site. After speaking to the client, it appears they were approached by a company who said that they could get the .com site ranking for local search queries and then push all that traffic to .co.uk. From analytics we can see that very little referrer traffic is coming from the .com. It sounds remarkably dodgy to us - surely the duplicate site is an issue anyway for obvious reasons, these links could also be deemed as being created for SEO gain? Does anyone have any experience of this as a tactic? Thanks, Dan
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SEOBirmingham810 -
Site Scraping and Canonical Tags
Hi, So I recently found a site (actually just one page) that has scraped my homepage. All the links to my site have been removed except the canonical tag, should this be disavowed through WMT or reported through WMT's Spam Report? Thanks in advance for any feedback.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | APFM0 -
Do some sites get preference over others by Google just because? Grandfathered theory
So I have a theory that Google "grandfathers" in a handful of old websites from every niche and that no matter what the site does, it will always get the authority to rank high for the relevant keywords in the niche. I have a website in the crafts/cards/printables niche. One of my competitors is http://printable-cards.gotfreecards.com/ This site ranks for everything... http://www.semrush.com/info/gotfreecards.com+(by+organic) Yet, when I go to visit their site, I notice duplicate content all over the place (extremely thin content, if anything at all for some pages that rank for highly searched keywords), I see paginated pages that should be getting noindexed, bad URL structure and I see an overall unfriendly user experience. Also, the backlink profile isn't very impressive, as most of the good links are coming from their other site, www.got-free-ecards.com. Can someone tell me why this site is ranking for what it is other than the fact that it's around 5 years old and potentially has some type of preference from Google?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
Do legitimately earned links from unrelated sites help or hurt?
We have a few charity events coming up that have offered to link back to our homepage. While we do genuinely like the charities we are going to sponsor, I'm not sure how those links will look seo-wise. For example, one is for the local high school basketball team and another is for a Pediatric Care Mud Run. To a human, these links make perfect sense, but to a robot, I'm not sure if it differentiates these links from spam/some negative link. Granted, I understand that a small percentage of links probably won't do anything either way, but I'd like to ignore that for the purposes of my question. All things being equal, do links such as these help or hurt? Thanks for your time and insight, Ruben
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
No Follows - Sister/manufacturer sites
What is the best practice nowadays for linking to sister sites? Should you do it, shouldn't you, and/or should you list them with no follows? What about the reverse - having them link to us. Is this bad for us in anyway? Should we have them no follow their link to us? We are a distributor so manufacturers link to us as well, should we have them no follow their links? Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CHECOM0 -
How can do I report a multiple set of duplicated websites design to manipulate SERPs?
Ok, so within one of my client's sectors it has become clear that someone is trying to manipulate the SERPs by registering tons of domains that are all keyword targeted. All of the websites are simply duplications of one another and are merely setup to dominate the SERP listings - which, at the moment, it is beginning to do. None of the sites have any real authority (in some cases 1 PA and DA) and yet they're ranking above much more established websites. The only back links they have are from dodgy-looking forum ones. It's all a bit crazy and it shouldn't be happening. Anyway, all of the domains have been registered by the same person and within a two-month time period of each other. What do you guys think is the best step to take to report these particular websites to Google?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Webrevolve0 -
Is there a way to check if your site has a Google penalty?
Is there a way to find out if your site has an over optimization penalty?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RonMedlin0