Need some advise on using a micro site
-
I thought I would use a micro site with just some main product landing pages being used. I would use the same design and code as main site, then re-write the text and then link everything to the new site. “BUT” I'm concerned about getting a penalty (duplicate) as all the anchor text links going to the main site would be identical!
EG. To use the same design as the main site I would need to use the same layout etc including navbars, anchor text links in the footer etc.. and I'm worried this may trigger a duplicate content penalty ?
Any advise please
-
Hi Matthew,
Thanks for your reply. Would you be so kind as to read my previous question which will answer your questions.
I would appreacate you advise on this.
Thanks Chris
Here is a copy:
Hi, I will try to explain my situation as clearly as I can, and any positive advise would be greatly appreciated. Obviously please let me know if you have any questions but I'm sorry the domains are private.
I started by business 4 years ago and launched a website (site A) and worked hard to promote it in the best way I knew how. It brought in a good income for around 3 years but then was hit with some sort of google penalty/filter!
Knowing then what I know now would probably of avoided the problem altogether but that's another story...
So I brought another domain (site B) and started again with a new design and completely re-branded the company, and again have been working hard to promote it. It has been preforming well and there has been steady progress
However since then I have been steadily promoting the penalised site (site A) and keeping an eye on it to see if the penalty/filter may be lifted. It had initially lost around 75% of traffic, but recently has been doing much better in SERPS and is again on the increase.
My problem is that with my company now being completely re branded I want to keep consistency but (site A) looks old and dated compared the new one (site B) and I don’t want to be confusing users etc...
So I need a cost efficient and “safe” solution to this in terms of SEO and budget.
301 Redirect to site B
I thought of a 301 redirect “BUT” I'm concerned about the penalty/filter being passed onto the new site (site B) and have read this dose happen ?
Complete Redesign/brand for site A
This would probably be the best option except I'm limited on funds. I would need “another” full commerce site as its just way to much money at the moment.
Remove site A completely
Funds are tight and I'm still feeling the affects of the penalty so really can't afford to loose any traffic at all!
Use site A as a micro-site
I thought a micro site with just the main product landing pages being used. I would use the same design as site B, then re-write the text and then link everything to the new site. “BUT” I'm concerned about getting another penalty (duplicate) as all the anchor text links going to site B site would be identical!
EG. To use the same design as site B I would need to use the same layout etc including navbars, anchor text links in the footer etc.. and I'm worried this may trigger a duplicate content penalty ?
I hope there are some suggestion for my situation and thanks in advance for your help.
Thanks Chris.
-
What is the point of creating this kind of microsite? Is it for search or for another subset of users (for instance, you want to drive ads to the microsite instead of the main site)?
If it isn't for search purposes, I'd disallow access to the site to prevent Google/Bing from crawling and prevent issues with duplicated content or spammy links. This way you avoid all problems and won't impact your main website in any way (where search engines are concerned).
If it is for search purposes, why build what sounds like virtually the same site? That seems like it could do more harm than good. If it is for search purposes, you'd probably be better off putting the same effort into marketing the main site. Possibly consider A/B testing new content that new content within the current 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
-
How to redirect 301 from high authority sites to own website?
How to redirect 301 from high authority sites to own website? If anyone know can tell me, such gigs are selling on the Fiverr.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jefjaa0 -
Moving content form Non-performing site to performing site - wihtout 301 Redirection
I have 2 different websites: one have good amount of traffic and another have No Traffic at all. I have a website that has lots of valuable content But no traffic. And I want to move the content of non-performing site to performing site. (Don't want to redirect) My only concern is duplicate content. I was thinking of setting the pages to "noindex" on the original website and wait until they don't appear in Google's index. Then I'd move them over to the performing domain to be indexed again. So, I was wondering If it will create any copied content issue or not? What should i have to take care of when I am going to move content from one site to another?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | HuptechWebseo0 -
Scraping Website and Using Our Clients Info
One of our clients on Moz has noticed that another website has been scraping their website and pulling lots of their content without permission. We would like to notify Google about this company but are not sure if that is the right remedy to correct the problem. They appear in search results on Google using the client's name so they seem to be use page titles etc with the client's name in them. Several of the SERP links link to their own website but it pulls in our client's web page. Was hoping anyone could perhaps provide some additional options on how to attack this problem?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | InTouchMK0 -
Using PURL.org/GoodRelations for Schema Markup
Hello awesome MOZ community! Our agency uses JSON-LD for our local business schema markup. We validate our markup using Google's Structured Data Testing Tool. All good! Recently, I discovered a competing agency using our similar JSON-LD markup (that's ok) and "http://purl.org/goodrelations" markup. The latter appears to be–potentially–black hat SEO. Why? According to MOZ, "there is no conclusive evidence that this markup improves rankings." BUT, the purl.org markup has provided an opportunity for "keyword stuffing". Using purl.org markup, the agency has stuffed/used 66 of the same keywords into the validated markup. I would love to get feedback from the MOZ community. Can schema markup–of any kind–be used to "keyword stuff"? If so, why aren't sites getting penalized for this? Is this practice flying under the elusive algorithm radars? Thanks! Your feedback, insight, and snarky remarks are welcome 🙂 Cheers!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SproutDigital0 -
Algorithmically penalized site
I have been doing SEO for years, but luckily have never had a client penalized or had to go through that. I see everyone talking about it at conferences and know the absolute basics of recovery, but just had someone come to me that was algorithmically penalized about two years ago. They have no actual data to show me a date and they couldn't tell me a specific date. According to them, their SEO disappeared and wouldn't give them access to the analytics. They are definitely showing just about every red flag with anchor tags and low trust links and tons of duplicate content. Just about everything. I realize you don't have the deep data to go by, but are there cases when it is just better to start over from scratch. They have literally thousands of bad links and strange site pages that they say they weren't even aware of. Whether they were or not I guess isn't the point now, but I have heard rumors that if you start over, Google will still figure it out and follow you with the penalty. Is this true or documented? Don't want to potentially recommend that if that is something that generally happens to bad offenders. Happy to do the work and try to resolve their issues, but it is a lot of work and is going to be expensive and want to present other options. Thanks and any thoughts suggestions are appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jeremyskillings0 -
What tools do you use to find scraped content?
This hasn’t been an issue for our company so far, but I like to be proactive. What tools do you use to find sites that may have scraped your content? Looking forward to your suggestions. Vic
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | VicMarcusNWI0 -
Do sitewide links from other sites hurt SEO?
A friend of mine has a pagerank 3 website that links to all my pages on my site on every page of his site. The anchor text of all these links are the title of each page that it links to. Does this hurt SEO? I can have him change to the links to whatever i want, so if it does hurt, what should i change the anchor text to if needed? Thanks mozzers! Ron
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Ron100