Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Sister Sites or Joint Family?
-
A large News Media Group has a Tv Channel, print newspaper, radio channel (for music primarly) and an online website that includes the newspaper content and other original content in different media. My question is, is it better to have independant websites for these different mediums or have all the content on one big website. Currently the newspaper and blog are online as one whereas the radio channel has its own website and the television has its own. So should we maintain sister sites and cross link to each other or have one big happy family under one house?
Best,
Rishad.
-
Thanks for your response. As an SEO, I would have to agree with your approach but I don't think the decision to merge these different mediums on the online front will rest with the SEO, however, when asked for my two cents, i can give them the option that is most likely to bring maximum benefits.
Cheers!
-
Thanks for such a detailed answer. A very good explaination and you've pointed out important things to think about. As goodnewscowboy said, the answer cannot be solely based on SEO and you've pointed out the different things to take into consideration.
Cheers!
-
The answers above are all good. I don't know if there is a right answer though. I think my approach would be something like what http://www.gap.com did. They have 5 different sites combined into one. Look at the URLs. Looks like they are using subdomains to use the same shopping cart between all sites. But I don't think you would need to do subdomains. I would shoot for long term SEO strategy.
-
Hi Rishad:
My answer to your question is soley based on SEO. The more concentrated your focus on the one site and the incoming links, the higher an authority the site will gain.
But I hadn't thought about the marketing angle until I read Gianluca's response. He makes a strong case for letting your marketing/brand requirements drive the decision.
-
Perfect answer!
-
Not so easy to answer, because definitely we are not talking just about SEO, but essentially of Marketing and Brand Marketing. I will try to give you my opinion, also basing it on my 11 years of experience in Media industry.
The choice, as an SEO, would be to have one site, as all the backlinks, citations and social buzz would pointing to just one domain. Anyway, I would wisely design the different communication areas in order they seems visually (and psichologically) different for the user. In that way you can maintain the essential difference between the three media (Newspaper, Radio, Tv), also because - as you say about the Radio - these media not necessarely have the same main focus.
My main concern as an SEO would be the indexation of such a big website, therefore I would put all my attention on the navigational architecture of a site that would include all the three distinct ones.
BUT, as Marketer and if the branding between the three Medium is very different, I would not put them under the same domain, but I would mantain them separate and croslink them editorially (for instance the newspaper using videos of the tv site). This could also better the construction of your News Media Group enthity.
More over, using three different sites/domains it is possible to strategy web marketing plan which complement themselves, in order to conquer three different range of searches and users.
In this last case, the real problem wouldn't be SEO, but the coordination of the tree SEO/web marketing plans.
-
We recently went through domain consolidation of two high authority corporate websites. Based on my experience, combining all the media sites into one would be a wise decision for brand positioning, usability and seo. Domain authority continues to be one of the top search ranking factors and building the authority of one domain is lot easier than building authorities of multiple domains.
There could be instances where you may want to keep content / software on separate domains i.e. a startup investment, brand new software or an acquisition.
Having separate domains may have advantages in short term but having a one domain in longer time is highly suggested. (think Google)
Hope this helps.
Thanks
Sameer
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 access my site using www
Hello, when I try to access my website using www i would like it to redirect to non www but instead it shows a sal error message.
On-Page Optimization | | Voopoo2 -
Word Count - Content site vs ecommerce site
Hi there, what are your thoughts on word count for a content site vs. an ecommerce site. A lot of content sites have no problem pushing out 500+ words per page, which for me is a decent amount to help you get traction. However on ecommerce sites, a lot of the time the product description only needs to be sub-100 words and the total word count on the page comes in at under 300 words, a lot of that could be considered duplicate. So what are your views? Do ecommerce sites still need to have a high word count on the product description page to rank better?
On-Page Optimization | | Bee1590 -
Random /feed 404 error from a wordpress site
My Moz Analytics report shows a 404 error on a page which I think should not exist at all. The URL is http://henryplumbingco.com/portfolio-item/butler-elementary/feed/. When I checked webmaster tools, it looks like there are a number of random /feed urls throwing 404 errors. I am using WordPress and the Enfold theme. Anyone know how to get rid of these errors? Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | aj6130 -
Stolen Content reposted on other sites. How does this affect ranking?
Visitors often copy and paste my content and post it elsewhere... on Facebook, on Tumblr, on forums and sometimes on competing websites... but they don't link to me. How does Google treat this duplicated content? What is the best way to handle it? File DCMA claims or ask them for a link?
On-Page Optimization | | brianflannery0 -
Why does Google pick a low priority page on my site?
Hi Guys. One of my pages ranks quite well for "mid year diaries 14-15" on Google. The problem is it's a really specific product page (A4, Hardback, day-to-a-page diary I think). It would be much better for the user to land on our mid-year diaries category, not really deep into the site. Why is Google prioritizing this product page over our general 'mid year diaries' category? Especially when the category would relate to the search more accurately? I work for TOAD diaries and I think our page rank is 10 for this search. Eagerly awaiting some insight 🙂 Thanks in advance everyone! Isaac.
On-Page Optimization | | isaac6630 -
Multilingual site with untranslated content
We are developing a site that will have several languages. There will be several thousand pages, the default language will be English. Several sections of the site will not be translated at first, so the main content will be in English but navigation/boilerplate will be translated. We have hreflang alternate tags set up for each individual page pointing to each of the other languages, eg in the English version we have: etc In the spanish version, we would point to the french version and the english version etc. My question is, is this sufficient to avoid a duplicate content penalty for google for the untranslated pages? I am aware that from a user perspective, having untranslated content is bad, but in this case it is unavoidable at first.
On-Page Optimization | | jorgeapartime0 -
Trying to SEO a site that used Header Tags for Design
I am trying to SEO a website that was built years ago and uses Header tags for design. The site must have 25 and tags used for design purpose. Is there any way to work around this problem? Perhaps a code that tells Google to ignore these as Headers? The web designers say that they are looking to fix the problem sometime this summer but you never know if that means it a month away or years away. I really want to help this website but I believe that the Header tags are one of the reasons that his site does not show in the top 100 rankings for any keywords. Any help would be great. www.wallybuysell.com Chris.K
On-Page Optimization | | CKerr0 -
Moving a site from .cfm to Wordpress - How to keep the authority?
Hi guys, My client has a site built with Cold Fusion (web pages end in .cfm) and we're moving them over to Wordpress (for many reasons), keeping the same menu structure and navigation. Their previous SEO company was pretty awful, however, they did manage to establish some decent authority/backlinks for the website and its 20 or so pages. My questions: I assume I'll want to do 301 redirects for each page, possibly by editing the .htaccess file? Any advice on this? Anything else I need to consider in this move? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | alpen0