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
-
Domain Masking SEO Impact
I hope I am explaining this correctly. If I need to provide any clarity please feel free to ask. We currently use a domain mask on an external platform that points back to our site. We are a non-profit and the external site allows users to create peer-to peer fundraisers that benefit our ministry. Currently we get many meta issues related to this site as well as broken links when fundraisers expire etc. We do not have a need to rank for the information from this site. Is there a way to index these pages so that they are not a part of the search engine site crawls as it relates to our site?
Technical SEO | | SamaritansPurse0 -
Recently re-built our site and changed domain. Now I want to go back to old domain - it it a bad idea?
About a year ago I rebuilt our website and changed our domain name. We rent villas in Tuscany, we used to be 'invitationtotuscany.com'. Then I started doing the same in Provence, and in the italian lakes, so i had further sites called invitationtoprovence.com and invitationtotheitalianlakes.com. But maintaining them was awkward and I wanted to have one site. So I put them all onto invitationto.com and did 301s from the old domains and sites. Now I'd dropped off organic search results and I've also realised that invitationto.com is far less clear as a business address. My inclination is to go back to invitationtotuscany.com - Tuscany is still 80% of our business and have the other areas in there too - optimised for SEO for Provence etc. I'm being told its a really bad idea to change domain, 301 the old one, and then revert to the original domain. But I'm suffering anyway, so I wonder if I sjhouldn't just bite the bullet. A lot of my old good backlinks still point to invitationtotuscany.com (BBC, Sunday Times, etc) and the DA is 33 against 22 on the new one.. All help gratefully received! : )
Technical SEO | | DanWrightson0 -
What is the Impact of Duplicate Content on Multiple Managed Property Domains?
Hi Moz Community! Our team is having an internal (and external) debate regarding the extent and implications of duplicate content for a hospitality client that I would love to get some feedback on. I unfortunately cannot divulge the brand/URL, but will give as much info as possible. The brand in question manages dozens of properties in the US and worldwide and has recently rolled up all of the domains under a singular brand.com domain. So whereas the properties used to have their own domains (property1.com, property2.com, etc...), they are now housed in sub-folders (brand.com/property1, brand.com/property2.com and so forth). The concern we have is that they launched the new brand site with all of the property sites/content rolled up under the new brand.com domain, however all of the individual property sites and their pages are still live as well. All of the canonicals on both brand.com as well as property1.com (property2.com, property3.com, etc...) are self-referencing (so the canonicals for brand.com/property1 and all of its sub-ages do not point to the still live property1.com and all of its sub-pages, for example). On the brand side, they believe this is the best path forward as brand.com grows and gains some authority, with the later intent on eventually redirecting the individual property domains - but we are unclear of that timeline (though we do think its more months as opposed to days/weeks) So our questions for the community here are: What is the perceived impact in this state of limbo to the individual property sites (ideally they house the original content and have the history, but could Google still give preference to the brand.com/property URLs and/or could both of them suffer in rank/search experience from the duplicate content an non-uniform presentation?) Could brand.com be "dinged" so-to-speak due to launching with this much duplicate content? (And if so, could that affect how quickly normalization occurs after the property sites are finally redirected?) Anything else we should consider/Any other feedback from the community? Thank you all for your time and support!
Technical SEO | | imiJoe0 -
Why Are Some Pages On A New Domain Not Being Indexed?
Background: A company I am working with recently consolidated content from several existing domains into one new domain. Each of the old domains focused on a vertical and each had a number of product pages and a number of blog pages; these are now in directories on the new domain. For example, what was www.verticaldomainone.com/products/productname is now www.newdomain.com/verticalone/products/product name and the blog posts have moved from www.verticaldomaintwo.com/blog/blogpost to www.newdomain.com/verticaltwo/blog/blogpost. Many of those pages used to rank in the SERPs but they now do not. Investigation so far: Looking at Search Console's crawl stats most of the product pages and blog posts do not appear to be being indexed. This is confirmed by using the site: search modifier, which only returns a couple of products and a couple of blog posts in each vertical. Those pages are not the same as the pages with backlinks pointing directly at them. I've investigated the obvious points without success so far: There are a couple of issues with 301s that I am working with them to rectify but I have checked all pages on the old site and most redirects are in place and working There is currently no HTML or XML sitemap for the new site (this will be put in place soon) but I don't think this is an issue since a few products are being indexed and appearing in SERPs Search Console is returning no crawl errors, manual penalties, or anything else adverse Every product page is linked to from the /course page for the relevant vertical through a followed link. None of the pages have a noindex tag on them and the robots.txt allows all crawlers to access all pages One thing to note is that the site is build using react.js, so all content is within app.js. However this does not appear to affect pages higher up the navigation trees like the /vertical/products pages or the home page. So the question is: "Why might product and blog pages not be indexed on the new domain when they were previously and what can I do about it?"
Technical SEO | | BenjaminMorel0 -
Redirect old shop to new domain
I have an old Magento shop placed on a subdomain: http://webshop.teamout.dk/ Now I have created a new shop in another store system called ShopOrama on a new rootdomain: What is the best way to get all my already indexed sites from google to redirect to my new site with the new META title + description? I have tried the Magento > Catalog > URL Rewrite, but it contains over 500 redirects already and making custom redirects for all my sites will take a lot of time. Because of the old site being a subdomain I can't change address in GWT. I'm looking forward to your solutions
Technical SEO | | NicolaiTeglskov.dk0 -
Umlaut in domain
Hi, My client wants to expand it's business to Germany and logically we need a domain name to match. We've found a great one and regsiterd several variants to it. However I just found out that in Germany it is possible (while here it's not) to register a domain with an umlaut. My question is: will google assign more value to: schädlinge.de than schadlinge.de when users search for schädlinge? If yes, how large will the difference be? (I will use an umlaut in the title etc) Kind regards,
Technical SEO | | media-surfer
Jason.0 -
Redirect link from a particular domain
Hi guys/gals, I have a few domains and blogs which I use really for a bit of fun and experimenting. One of the domains (abc.com) wasn't doing much but has a few decent links built to it. I redirected this domain to an active blog (123.com). Here's the problem: There's a particular external link to the homepage of abc.com which drives a lot of traffic but isn't relevant to the content of 123.com which it redirects to, causing a huge bounce rate from this link. Is there a way (maybe using using htaccess) that I can redirect traffic from this one link to another domain completely? I've contacted the owner of the external site but they are unable (or unwilling) to change the link. I hope I haven't lost you all but shout if you need any clarification. Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | Confetti_Wedding0 -
Buying a new domain
Hello guys! We are in process of buying a new domain. How can we be sure that this domain is not blacklisted and are there any steps to take in order to be sure that whatever we are buying is actually in "good shape"? Thanks much!
Technical SEO | | echo10
