Negative SEO impact of two Similar Domains on Same IP
-
Our ecommerce company has acquired a former competitor which has similar content & largely sells the same set of products. Both domains run on the same ecommerce platform version and do well organically on an overlapping set of keywords. Currently the websites are separate instances which are hosted separately. There is no interlinking or cross branding between the sites.
Since each brand has strong equity & SEO, there are no plans to combine brands or domains.
For several reasons, it would be ideal to combine platform instances and hosting, but we are concerned about potential SEO impact of shared IP addresses.
Is it likely that moving the sites to the same IP/C-Block could have a negative SEO impact since they rank on the same keywords. Would Google devalue one site if they were seen to be connected or owned by the same company?
I know this issue has been addressed for domains with more variance between products and content, but since there is a large overlap (but not duplicate content) between our two domains, we wanted additional insight.
Obviously there are other SEO factors when you move a site, but we are currently trying to understand this specific factor.
Thanks Community for your help!
-Amber
-
Hi Amber
The server or IP address has little to no effect on SEO. Your biggest concern is having a server that is close to your audience in terms of geographic location, that it is fast, and that you are not encumbered by the traffic to any other sites sharing the same IP.
For this reason, always go for a dedicated server which will have it's own unique IP and SSL certificate. Locate the second site on a separate server. The fact that they share the same neighbourhood or range of IP's is irrelevant.
We have covered this before so this thread might be of interest to you:
https://moz.com/community/q/ip-address-of-server-an-seo-factor
I hope that helps,
Kind Regards
Nigel
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
-
How to Evaluate Original Domain Authority vs. Recent 'HTTPS' Duplicate for Potential Domain Migration?
Hello Everyone, So our site has used ‘http’ for the domain since the start. Everything has been set up for this structure and Google is only indexing these pages. Just recently a second version was created on ‘httpS’. We know having both up is the worst case scenario but now that both are up is it worth just switching over or would the original domain authority warrant just keeping it on ‘http’ and redirecting the ‘httpS’ version? Assuming speed and other elements wouldn’t be an issue and it's done correctly. Our thought was if we could do this quickly it would be easier to just redirect the ‘httpS’ version but was not sure if the Pros of ‘httpS’ would be worth the resources. Any help or insight would be appreciated. Please let us know if there are any further details we could provide that might help. Looking forward to hearing from all of you! Thank you in advance for the help. Best,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ben-R1 -
Legacy domains
Hi all, A couple of years ago we amalgamated five separate domains into one, and set up 301 redirects from all the pages on the old domains to their equivalent pages on the new site. We were a bit tardy in using the "change of address" tool in Search Console, but that was done nearly 8 months ago now as well. Two years after implementing all the redirects, the old domains still have significant authority (DAs of between 20-35) and some strong inbound links. I expected to see the DA of the legacy domains taper off during this period and (hopefully!) the DA of the new domain increase. The latter has happened, although not as much as I'd hoped, but the DA of the legacy domains is more or less as good as it ever was? Google is still indexing a handful of links from the legacy sites, strangely even when it is picking up the redirects correctly. So, for example, if you do a site:legacydomain1.com query, it will give a list of results which includes pages where it shows the title and snippet of the page on newdomain.com, but the link is to the page on legacydomain1.com. What has prompted me to finally try and resolve this is that the server which hosted the original 5 domains is now due to be decommissioned which obviously means the 301 redirects for the original pages will no longer be served. I can set up web forwarding for each of the legacy domains at the hosting level, but to maintain the page-by-page redirects I'd have to actually host the websites somewhere. I'd like to know the best way forward both in terms of the redirect issue, and also in terms of the indexing of the legacy domains? Many thanks, Dan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | clarkovitch0 -
Two websites (Domains) with same content for more than 4 years which one to choose now?
Hi, I need help with this decision, thanks in advance. My client has 2 websites but they have the same content: one has 4 years http://radiocolombia.com.co/ and the the other one 7 years: http://radiocolombiainternacional.com/web/ This content has been duplicated for years, how do I know which website is more relevant for google? we have to pick one. Please any advice? Thanks, David
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoweb330 -
Seo flash site
Hey. Would hear whether it is possible to SEO a website which is flash site cms?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Agger0 -
Can Anybody Link to my URL to Hurt SEO? Weird URL pointing at my Domaine!
Our ranking has drop since a few weeks. I did not do any major change in my site. Surfing WebMaster Tool, I found lots of new URL linking at our site: url.org linkarena.com seoprofiler.com folkd.com digitalhome.ca bustingprice.com surepurchase.com lowpricetoday.com oyax.com couponfollow.com aspringcleaning.com pamabuy.com etzone.ca How do I find if those was done intentionelly to hurt SEO? Could it be possible? Thank you, BigBlaze
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BigBlaze2050 -
For multi language sites, what is best - two domains or one with both languages?
We are assisting a client in setting up English and Spanish sites in Texas. They want to be able to find customers who are Spanish speaking predominantly or totally along with the customers they now get who are English speakers. We are building them a new site and I have researched to find answers all over the board or less than clear. Should the structure be such that we have one site with a set of English and Spanish pages all with Spanish links to Spanish pages and English links to English pages. Should we instead just have an English site for those people who utilize English and a different site for those who utilize Spanish? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RobertFisher0 -
SEO question
Hi i changed my page titles for a competitive keyword last week and noticed it has dropped 9 search engine ranking positions. Was ranking 37 and now it 46. Would you guys leave it and see if it starts creeping back up or change again? the page title i used was across my pages for example was Primary keyword | secondary keyword | Heading on page thanks for you help
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wazza19850
