How do I fix a multiple domain mess?
-
I just picked up an account that is a franchisee and they have 6 exact match domains plus their main domain (all exact duplicates, not 301s). GA shows the main domain as getting the lion's share of hits, but for some important local keywords, the exact match domains rank higher. Some pages may have the exact match domain, primary domain and the franchise domain all ranking on the same SERP. Yuk!
My strategy is to work on the main domain and as the work progresses, the main site will surpass the exact match domains and main franchise domain for the important searches. For the exact match domains I plan on just leaving them alone. Is this a sound strategy? I could pull the exact match domains down, but since they rank well for their keywords, it seems most sensible to leave them up. What do you think?
-
Good point on owning the page! Phasing out the EMD's over time sounds like a good way to go.
-
3 domains ranking in the same SERP? Not necessarily a bad thing there, as you now own that page. Must help with the CTR.
My gut tells me that duplicate content is hurting your main site more than the traffic to the EMD justifies. Leaving the duplicate content up may continue to cripple your rankings over time.
Fortunately, you have a lot of tools at your disposal. If the backlinks aren't spammy, you shouldn't have much problem redirecting the domains to the main site. I'd experiment with redirecting a single EMD (exact match domain) and filing a change of address with Google Webmaster tools. (here's an excellent guide on site migration: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/web-site-migration-guide-tips-for-seos)
After this, look to see if the keywords sending traffic to the old domain now send traffic to the new. I'm not sure migrating one site out of 6 is going to make that big of difference, but it's much safer than migrating all six at once - which could be seen as somewhat suspicious by Google.
My guess is that combining your content into a single domain will give you a ranking/traffic boost that justifies the trouble.
Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO
-
They are all .com extensions. [service[city].com withing the same county in a US metro area.
Kris
-
Hello,
What extensions are these domains? are they different country gilds?
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
-
On our site by mistake some wrong links were entered and google crawled them. We have fixed those links. But they still show up in Not Found Errors. Should we just mark them as fixed? Or what is the best way to deal with them?
Some parameter was not sent. So the link was read as : null/city, null/country instead cityname/city
Technical SEO | | Lybrate06060 -
How to fix an 803 error?
Error Code 803: Incomplete HTTP Response Received How can I fix this error?
Technical SEO | | netprodjb0 -
Question about keywords on multiple pages
Hello all great to be apart of this community, My question is: I am trying to rank for two separate "two keyword" searches which are "BBB boost" and "ZZZ boost" I am planning to put "ZZZ boost" on my homepage/landing, and "BBB boost" on my second page where the end user actually purchases said product. "ZZZ boost" - receives around 22,000 monthly searches and "BBB boost" - around 5000 monthly searches Because each of these share the one keyword "boost" in them, will it affect my ability to rank for even one page on the "two keyword" phrase? Or will it cause both pages to come up in the google search results on either "two keyword" phrase because they share the same word "boost" in them? If so does that affect the ability to rank 1 page since they share the same domain name, will it divide page ranking/serp ranking?
Technical SEO | | zerk890 -
Merging Domains
Hi, Everyone, My company is currently working with a client that has multiple websites and is interested in merging them into one. One is a primary corporate site, the other is a site for a single line of products. They obviously want to merge the product site into the corporate site. The interesting thing is that the product site outperforms the corporate site. It has the highest traffic, and it has far more links/linking domains, a higher domain authority (although only by two points), and much more social activity. However, their reasons for wanting to merge the two are completely valid - less management, URL would match print collateral, etc. They're asking our opinion on whether or not to move forward with the merger. I'm leaning toward no simply because of the fact that the site they want to merge is outperforming the other. I'm curious, though, to get some other opinions on this. Would a merger be worth the work in this case? Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | PapercutInteractive0 -
4xx fix
Hi
Technical SEO | | gavinr
I have quite a lot of 4xx errors on our site. The 4xx occurred because I cleaned poor URLs that had commas etc in them so its the old URLs that now 4xx. There are no links to the URLs that 4xx. What is the best way of rectifying this issue of my own making?! Thanks
Gavin0 -
Block Domain in robots.txt
Hi. We had some URLs that were indexed in Google from a www1-subdomain. We have now disabled the URLs (returning a 404 - for other reasons we cannot do a redirect from www1 to www) and blocked via robots.txt. But the amount of indexed pages keeps increasing (for 2 weeks now). Unfortunately, I cannot install Webmaster Tools for this subdomain to tell Google to back off... Any ideas why this could be and whether it's normal? I can send you more domain infos by personal message if you want to have a look at it.
Technical SEO | | zeepartner0 -
How to fix rel canonical tags?
Hello there, I am trying to fix the issues with my campaign and I am trying to fix Rel canonical issues. I tried to read a few blogs and other sources which talked about the Rel canonical but I am not able to understand why is Rel Canonical happening? I understand that http://elegancealways.com is not the same as http://elegancealways.com/about-us/ but then I cannot change the link as the link is correct. I read about 301 and 302 redirects. I do not understand that which link is correct then? The errors SEO MOZ is showing is what I am not able to understand as these links are correct. I need help here!! Thanks Vineeta qTc2a2H.png
Technical SEO | | vineeta0 -
Is Go Daddy a bad domain?
I heard today that Go Daddy is not the besting hosting domain for websites...it isn't crawled well by websites. Is this true? What is the best hosting domain?
Technical SEO | | CapitolShine0