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.
Splitting a Site into Two Sites for SEO Purposes
-
I have a client that owns a business that really could be easily divided into two separate business in terms of SEO. Right now his web site covers both divisions of his business.
He gets about 5500 visitors a month. The majority go to one part of his business and around 600 each month go to the other. So about 11%
I'm considering breaking off this 11% and putting it on an entirely different domain name. I think I could rank better for this 11%. The site would only be SEO'd for this particular division of the company. The keywords would not be in competition with each other.
I would of course link the two web sites and watch that I don't run into any duplicate content issues.
I worry about placing the redirects from the pages that I remove to the new pages. I know Google is not a fan of redirects. Then I also worry about the eventual drop in traffic to the main site now. How big of a factor is traffic in rankings?
Other challenges include that the business services 4 major metropolitan areas.
Would you do this? Have you done this? How did it work?
Any suggestions?
-
I choose not to split it. With all that has changed in the SEO world I am glad I did not. The site has fared well thru all the changes and still ranks well for both divisions.
-
Interested to know if you ended up doing this and how it has worked out.
Thanks! -
I agree that there is no right answer. I too worry that by splitting it that I would be loosing a lot of the back linking work for that division. Thereby causing the site to drop in rankings. It does TERRIFIC for the other division, which is the biggest part of their business. I really hate to mess that part up on an experiment like this.
I'm still 50-50. I would love to hear from someone that has done this and hear details about what they experienced.
-
I don't think there's a "right" answer here, but my observation is that microsites aren't doing as well as they once did. It used to be that, just by having more sites, you did better. Now, as Google seems to be testing the volume know on exact-match domains, devalues cross-linking, and is harsher on duplicate and thin content, it's a lot harder to support separate sites. Factor in that you're splitting your links, social signals and offline marketing/branding, and promoting two properties can really make you lose focus.
That's not to say it's all-or-none, though. Exact- and partial-match domains do still carry weight, and if the niche is unique and separable enough, it is possible to build a strong identity for it. I'd really look at the business side, though, for guidance. Is this a division of the business that really stands alone as a brand? If so, separation could provide broader benefit. If you're just separating for SEO, I'd generally side with keeping the unified site.
The issue with the redirects is that the weight of those pages only gets to exist in one place. So, if some of those pages have inbound links, a 301-redirect will kick start the new domain, but it will also take away from the authority of the old domain. In other words, you may not just lose the traffic itself - you may lose some of the main domain's ranking ability. That depends a LOT on the situation, though (it's hard to speak in generalities).
-
Slippery slope......Short term it is always better to stay focused. Old saying goes "what you focus on you find". One site and consolidating all the value is always the best short term policy.
Long term, if you continue to build SEO value and the sites are truly different, then you are better off with 2 sites. Here is why:
The same principle applies to the strategy of creating smaller well defined adgroups in adwords to increase your relevance and quality score.... You will create a higher relevancy for those keywords if you separate the site. The problem with this strategy is when you separate the site, you will lose some seo value for both sites.....the way to counteract that is you could pass "linkjuice" back and forth to the sites based on what they needed. But if you have a solid strategy and are working hard at SEO, thats like "mental masturbation" (can i say that?)
Several times we took 1 site and created 2-3 sites. SEO values go down temporarily but we counteracted this by developing a bunch of new relevant content, hyperfocused on the specific sites, and when we eventually got the site reindexed, we were already in better shape than when we started. More importantly, similar to your situation, one of the sites had less competition for several keywords and we started to dominate in that category.
Other assorted stuff:
4 metropolitan areas is not an issue. In some ways it is a plus as it gives you 4 geotargeting opportunities to differentiate yourself from your competitors.
redirects are here to stay. As long as google understands why you are redirecting then you are ok.
Hope this helps. Make it happen.
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
-
Does changing template for a wordpress site affect SEO
Hi I work for an Inventory Management Software company and we already have a WordPress site but I am currently working on re-designing of our WordPress site and in this process, we are looking for moving to a new template. I want to know what will be the impact on SEO performance while taking a shift to a new template.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cin7_Marketing0 -
Splitting One Site Into Two Sites Best Practices Needed
Okay, working with a large site that, for business reasons beyond organic search, wants to split an existing site in two. So, the old domain name stays and a new one is born with some of the content from the old site, along with some new content of its own. The general idea, for more than just search reasons, is that it makes both the old site and new sites more purely about their respective subject matter. The existing content on the old site that is becoming part of the new site will be 301'd to the new site's domain. So, the old site will have a lot of 301s and links to the new site. No links coming back from the new site to the old site anticipated at this time. Would like any and all insights into any potential pitfalls and best practices for this to come off as well as it can under the circumstances. For instance, should all those links from the old site to the new site be nofollowed, kind of like a non-editorial link to an affiliate or advertiser? Is there weirdness for Google in 301ing to a new domain from some, but not all, content of the old site. Would you individually submit requests to remove from index for the hundreds and hundreds of old site pages moving to the new site or just figure that the 301 will eventually take care of that? Is there substantial organic search risk of any kind to the old site, beyond the obvious of just not having those pages to produce any more? Anything else? Any ideas about how long the new site can expect to wander the wilderness of no organic search traffic? The old site has a 45 domain authority. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Local SEO - two businesses at same address - best course of action?
Hi Mozzers - I'm working with 2 businesses at the moment, at the same address - the only difference between the two is the phone number. I could ask to split the business addresses apart, so that NAP(name, address, phone number) is different for each businesses (only the postcode will be the same). Or simply carry on at the moment, with the N and Ps different, yet with the As the same - the same addresses for both businesses. I've never experienced this issue before, so I'd value your input. Many thanks, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Is it bad for SEO to have a page that is not linked to anywhere on your site?
Hi, We had a content manager request to delete a page from our site. Looking at the traffic to the page, I noticed there were a lot of inbound links from credible sites. Rather than deleting the page, we simply removed it from the navigation, so that a user could still access the page by clicking on a link to it from an external site. Questions: Is it bad for SEO to have a page that is not directly accessible from your site? If no: do we keep this page in our Sitemap, or remove it? If yes: what is a better strategy to ensure the inbound links aren't considered "broken links" and also to minimize any negative impact to our SEO? Should we delete the page and 301 redirect users to the parent page for the page we had previously hidden?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jnew9290 -
SEO Considerations for merging two brand website into one
Hello fellow Mozzers, We have two websites for two similar brands at my place of employment, the two brands currently serve slighly different products but could be held quite happily under one branded site. As part of a potential group merger into one sole brand, we will have to create one joined up website which will then feature all our products. The newly merged site will also have more scope to allow us to expand our product range where as currently one brand is kind of specific to a particular market due to its name. So as part of the Merge, I have to consider the potential implications for our search traffic, as this is an integral part of our business. Brand A - older, more authorative, great content, good organic positions - top 10 for pretty much all terms we favour. Brand B - younger, but has more marketing scope due to name, still good site and lots of content. Unfortunately Brand B has more in terms of potential lifespan, but is currently the less authorative of the two sites we run. it has lower DA and PR according to my Moz Analytics, a lower number of quality links and less content. In order to give the Brand B website the boost that is needed and in effect replace Brand A in the serps which has great organic positions, I need to make sure all bases are ticked for an action plan. So far this is what I have. Transfer all exisiting Brand A web pages to Brand B website. Rel canonical all Brand A pages to now point to Brand B websites new pages. 301 redirect all pages on Brand A to Brand B during the transfer. Once 301 redirects are in place then request external sites to actually repoint to Brand B website for any links. Update xml Sitemaps Update any content that mentions Brand B to now be Brand A. resubmit sitemaps to Webmaster tools Update all social profiles Update all local search profiles and listings Update all review sites with new brand name / merge any with both brands On a supplementary note for customer information, looking to also keep the older Brand A Home page up for a short time to help people understand the transition rather than a complete redirect which to our demographic could confuse and alienate people. Will also look to send a mass email to roughly 400K people informing them of the move abd how it affects them. I have no doubt there will be some glaringly obvious additions, any further advice would be much appreciated. Hope you are all well. Tim
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TimHolmes1 -
SEO site Review
Does anyone have suggestions on places that provide in depth site / analytics reviews for SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gordian0 -
Migrating online store to subdomain using shopify and effects on seo and energy down the road for seo
I'm looking for some clarity... Looking at using Shopify for an existing online store that we have to migrate. Setting up the store with shopify means we will be using a subdomain such as shop.mywebsite.com instead of mywebsite.com/shop. The following are points to consider when responding The client currently has an online store, however it's a proprietary shopping store and CMS that has since gone defunct and they need to migrate to an alternative in order to survive online against new CMS systems that allow the site and its content to be better optimized. There is a lot of existing SEO done on the current site that we don't want to loose PR on. There is roughly 2000 products Client has a fixed budget, dealing with checkout issues, custom work and various other "bugs" seems to be easier controlled with Shopify...thus budget can be used more on content/strategy and migration We want to run the main site in Wordpress and are wanting to use Shopify since it supports a gateway, has great features and seems like it would allow us to get more bang for the buck and can focus more on the main site and content strategy and drive traffic to the subdomain store if needed Or main concern is the effort of migrating 2000+ products to shopify and the traffic and PR it gives the current site will have a negative effect on the main domain itself. Should we really be considering this path? The domain is diveidc.com One main benefit to the subdomain is the ability to clearly segment products from the service portion of the site in the analytics and focus 2 clear strategies and track it in a very defined manner. We're really on the fence with this...any thoughts are welcome.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MAGNUMCreative0 -
RSS feeds- What are the secrets to getting them, and the links inside then, indexed and counted for SEO purposes?
RSS feeds, at least on paper, should be a great way to build backlinks and boost rankings. They are also very seductive from a link-builder's point of view- free, easy to create, allows you to specifiy anchor text, etc. There are even several SEO articles, anda few products, extolling the virtues of RSS for SEO puposes. However, I hear anecdotedly that they are extremely ineffective in getting their internal links indexed. And my success rate has been abysmal- perhaps 15% have ever been indexed,and so far, I havenever seem Google show an RSS feed as a source for a backlink. I have even thrown some token backlinks against RSS feeds to see if that helped in getting them indexed, but even that has a very low success rate. I recently read a blog post saying that Google "hates aRSS feeds" and "rarely spiders perhaps the first link or two." Yet there are many SEO advocates who claim that RSS feeds are a great untapped resource for SEO. I am rather befuddled. Has anyone "crackedthe code" onhow to get them,and the links that they contain, indexed and helping rankings?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tclendaniel0