Clone sites at new company
-
I just came in house to our company for SEO. We have one main site and 182 that are exact duplicates and almost exact clones of the main site.
It's no surprise that half of these clones are deindexed already. The meta tags are just the domain name URL. I want to add unique text on the home page to each site, fix the meta tags and switch them up so they aren't clones.
Other than a huge rewrite of the code for each site, I'm not sure what else to do to prevent the rest from getting deindexed.
Is there any way to prevent the rest from getting deindexed?
-
What about turning them into regional sites? A has inventory located in this state, B inventory only in that state, etc. So they are not exact clones.
-
Hi CFSSEO,
I'm going through some older Q&A questions and wondering how this project is going for you. Is there anything more we can do to help you convince management that 182 clones aren't in their best interest?
-
If I inherited these sites and didn't have a boss to answer to I would deindex all of them but one intentionally.
I would then redirect them all to the main site.
"and so they want to get something out of them now."
ha... I would allow them to expire and use the savings to buy beer. Savings is what you will get out of them IMO.
-
CFSSEO
It sounds as if someone in the past thought having multiple sites would improve things. There is no point in even redirecting these.
1. Keep your main site.
2. If one or two of the clones happen to have any PA, DA - from different links than you have on main, you should redirect those pages to the same page on the main site. (Highly likely they do not)
3. On the other sites, take them down. Save money and time on hosting, etc.
4. Teach those in your company it must be about content, etc. and quality links and focus like crazy on the one.
5. On the chance someone would later question this, I would do a screenshot on every one possible showing the traffic to the site over the last 6 months in GA. (This is to protect you).6. When the main site increases in traffic, etc. Demand a raise!!
Best
-
The main site has inventory, the clone sites also have the same inventory listings. I believe the hope was that with more clone sites, the inventory will get more traffic and more sales OMG! Of course, that hasn't happened, but time and money went into these domains and so they want to get something out of them now.
The sites provide value to the people listing their stuff for sale, and to the user who finds items to buy. The sites do not actually have any backlinks but all link to the main site.
I think the best to hope for would be for these clone sites to just count as more backlinks to the main site because they are not ranking anywhere on their own.
-
The main site has inventory, the clone sites also have the same inventory listings. I believe the hope was that with more clone sites, the inventory will get more traffic and more sales OMG! Of course, that hasn't happened, but time and money went into these domains and so they want to get something out of them now.
I think the best to hope for would be for these clone sites to just count as more backlinks to the main site because they are not ranking anywhere on their own.
-
I've got the same thoughts as Aran.
What are these 182 sites for? Why do they exist? What are they meant to achieve?
If these sites are deindexed, do they have any value? Do these sites get any traffic? Does the mainsite get any traffic via these sites (and is this traffic worth anything - does any of this traffic convert?
Do these sites have any inbound links?
If these sites provide no value, no links, no business etc then I would seriously question why you need them.
The effort required to get these sites up and running and delivering some value is almost certainly going to be better spent on your main site.
-
To what end do you want to use the other sites for?
Surely, its easier to optimise one site than hundreds?
Will rewriting the other sites benefit you and if so will the benefits outweight the amount of work required, or could that effort be applied elsewhere to beefit the main site?
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
-
Moving to new platform
I am moving a site with great SEO and tons of pages to a new platform. Page names will all be different because they will not have the .html ending and names will change. It is on a system that does not support .htaccess. So, I don't have a way to do 301 redirects. How can I keep my competitive status? Thank you!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bhsiao0 -
How much SEO damage would it do having a subdomain site rather directory site?
Hi all! With a coleague we were arguing about what is better: Having a subdomain or a directory.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gaston Riera
Let me explain some more, this is about the cases: Having a multi-language site: Where en.domain.com or es.domain.com rather than domain.com/en/ or domain.com/es/ Having a Mobile and desktop version: m.domain.com or domain.com rather than domain.com/m or just domain.com. Having multiple location websites, you might figure. The dicussion started with me saying: Its better to have a directory site.
And my coleague said: Its better to have a subdomain site. Some of the reasons that he said is that big companies (such as wordpress) are doing that. And that's better for the business.
My reasons are fully based on this post from Rand Fishkin: Subdomains vs. Subfolders, Rel Canonical vs. 301, and How to Structure Links for SEO - Whiteboard Friday So, what does the community have to say about this?
Who should win this argue? GR.0 -
What has a better chance of ranking alongside my main site for my company name, a subdomain or new domain?
Hi Moz, Do search engines really treat subdomains as separate domains in this regard? Or are we more likely to get more real estate on the first page with a new domain? Our goal is to have our main site and this new subdomain or domain ranking in positions 1 and 2 for our company name. This is going to be a careers site/portal. Thanks for reading!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DA20130 -
Links from new sites with no link juice
Hi Guys, Do backlinks from a bunch of new sites pass any value to our site? I've heard a lot from some "SEO experts" say that it is an effective link building strategy to build a bunch of new sites and link them to our main site. I highly doubt that... To me, a new site is a new site, which means it won't have any backlinks in the beginning (most likely), so a backlink from this site won't pass too much link juice. Right? In my humble opinion this is not a good strategy any more...if you build new sites for the sake of getting links. This is just wrong. But, if you do have some unique content and you want to share with others on that particular topic, then you can definitely create a blog and write content and start getting links. And over time, the domain authority will increase, then a backlink from this site will become more valuable? I am not a SEO expert myself, so I am eager to hear your thoughts. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | witmartmarketing0 -
Similar sites on same IP address
Hello, A client has a small number (3) of large price comparison sites which have been launched on separate subdomains - BUT all on the same hosting IP address. The roll out of the sites was not ideal from an SEO perspective - as basically cloned versions of the sites were initially launched and indexed - and are only now being customised i.e. unique content added to each of the category and sub category pages. The first site initially got some traffic - and so did the 2nd in the early days - but then they both bombed (especially number 2). So we think there has probably been some kind of slap / sandboxing. We are starting to see some very early signs of recovery now some months after. My questions is - would it be a wise move to migrate each of the sites to a separate IP address as we start to evolve and optimise each site. Or are they ok to be left on the same hosting / IP address? The sites in question are : shop.deliaonline.com shop.ivillage.co.uk rewards.bestforfilm.com Thanks in advance for your help. Richard
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RichBestSEO0 -
Site Structure Question
Hi All, Got a question about site structure, I currently have a website where everything is hosted on the root of the domain. See example below: site.com/men site.com/men-shorts site.com/men-shorts-[product name] I want to change the structure to site.com/men/shorts/[product-name] I have asked a couple of SEOs and some agree with me that the structure needs to be changed and some say that as long as I dictate the structure with internal links and breadcrumbs the URL structure doesn't matter... What do you guys think? Many thanks, Carlos
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Carlos-R0 -
New links not showing in site explorer ?
I have built links to my site this past month that I know are live and in place and some do follow and some no follow ... Are the no follow links just not going to show up in my site explorer data ? And the others - why would they not be showing up yet ? SeoMoz updated thier link data aug 1st , my site has been crawled since then , but this new work I have done for link building have not shown up - None of them ? Its like I did not do any work ? how long could it take for them to show up and affect my site trust ect ? Also is there anything I vould be doing to speed the process up of having the new links found ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jlane90 -
ReLaunching a very old site
Hi, I am in the process of re-vamping a website that hasn't been touched for years and whose rankings slowly dropped. Any best practice in how to do it making sure that there's not any more loss and - hopefully - it could go back to the old glory? The website is http://www.nlp-world.com Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pdmonline0