Removed Duplicate Domains, What Should I Expect?
-
Hi All,
So I have been at my current company for 5 months now. I quickly realized that they previously bought multiple domains. The domains do make sense (they are mostly our products, etc). However they did not just redirect to our main website, instead, they were a direct copy of our main website.
They had it setup so that when we made changes to our main website, www.mainwebsite.com, that the same exact change went to www.productwebsite.com. Basically we had about 7 of the SAME EXACT websites with a different root domain. So I explained to them the problem with having duplicate content on the web and how we are basically just self cannibalizing our online efforts. This problem is fixed now and I am just wondering if anybody has seen the results before?
To tell you the truth we already do pretty well SEO-wise. Just wondering if this will make it even better? I am assuming that this will also take a little while to take effect?
Thanks!
Pat
-
Hi Irving,
No we had 0 PR outreach pointing to these other domains. Each site had VERY minimal external links that were very outdated.
Good to know about the rankings. I was really hoping that I would see a boost but just glad we fixed the problem.
-
Pat - did any of those duplicate sites have PR or significant traffic, if so, I hope you setup a 301 redirect to the master site. Typically, Google will just penalize the dupe sites and allow the main site to keep it's rankings. Unless those sites can pass PR, I highly doubt you will see in traffic just by eliminating the duplicate sites.
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
-
Migration to a new domain
Hi everyone, So i have one project where I'm planning to move current content on new domain, two reasons: 1. It seems current domain has some google penalty (backlink related, not manual) 2. Client wants rebranding and already has domain with new brand name. So as content is high quality and there is no content related penalty from google, what would be the best way to migrate existing content without passing any penalty AND without Google treating it as duplicate content. If i do 301 i suspect any penalty there is might follow, if i just copy existing content it won't be original content, what is the best solution here? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | joelsemy0 -
Domain Name Migation + HTTPS?
One of our clients is considering migrating their domain name _and _changing protocol (http to https), as well as changing hosting providers, at the same time. Is it fine to make the changes at the same time, or would you recommend 'phasing' the migration?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ThreeShips1 -
Will we be penalised for duplicate content on a sub-domain?
Hi there, I run a WordPress blog and I use [community platform] Discourse for commenting. When we publish a post to Wordpress, a duplicate of that post is pushed to a topic on Discourse, which is on a sub-domain. Eg: The original post and the duplicated post. Will we be penalised for duplicating our own content on a subdomain? If so, other than using an excerpt, what are our options? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ILOVETHEHAWK0 -
Duplicate content question
Hi there, I work for a Theater news site. We have an issue where our system creates a chunk of duplicate content in Google's eyes and we're not sure how best to solve. When an editor produces a video, it simultaneously 1) creates a page with it's own static URL (e.g. http://www.theatermania.com/video/mary-louise-parker-tommy-tune-laura-osnes-and-more_668.html); and 2) displays said video on a public index page (http://www.theatermania.com/videos/). Since the content is very similar, Google sees them as duplicate. What should we do about this? We were thinking that one solution would to be dynamically canonicalize the index page to the static page whenever a new video is posted, but would Google frown on this? Alternatively, should we simply nofollow the index page? Lastly, are there any solutions we may have missed entirely?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheaterMania0 -
Best way to remove duplicate content with categories?
I have duplicate content for all of the products I sell on my website due to categories and subcategories. Ex: http://www.shopgearinc.com/products/product/stockfeeder-af38.php http://www.shopgearinc.com/products/co-matic-power-feeders/stockfeeder-af38.php http://www.shopgearinc.com/products/co-matic-power-feeders/heavy-duty-feeders/stockfeeder-af38.php Above are 3 urls to the same title and content. I use a third party developer backend system so doing canonicalization seems difficult as I don't have full access. What is the best to get rid of this duplicate content. Can I do it through webmaster tools or should I pay the developer to do the canonicalization or a 301 redirect? Any suggestions? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kysizzle60 -
Domain name Length
How many characters max per domain name ,is that important factor ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | innofidelity0 -
Are sites that leave out www from domain at a disadvantage to domains with www in url
I know this has been discussed but was wondering what would be the best approach from an SEO perspective. I quite like the idea of setting up websites with domains without www but always worry that setting up domains without www has a disadvantage because user are use to referring to sites with the www included. Thus one of my fears are that users would link back using www version which will mean even if you do a 301 redirect that some of the link juice would be lost. I know some famous sites have used this convention such as http://searchenginewatch.com/ so think it would be possible but still concerned that for new sites it would be better to rather stick to conventions. What are your opinions about this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SABest0