2 sites in one niche?
-
Hello,
Can you be penalized for having 2 ecommerce sites in the same niche? Is there a way to do it white-hat? Please explain.
-
Google will simply filter out duplicate content unless you do it really badly and then you would probably get a message in GWT saying that you had copied something. If you have multiple sites in the same niche and are genuinely contributing original and valuable content then I don't see an issue. If I'm not mistaken match.com and chemistry.com largely run dynamic content and do a good job of it too. Dynamic content (which makes sense) is the easiest way to go with this in terms of building maintainable sites going forward.
-
That's how we do it too Will. We rank the first site and then add the second. You'll learn a lot about the niche when you build out the first one.
You can also do it where you have a e-commerce site as your main site and a reviews/ratings of products for the other site. You can have the product reviewed on the second site and pull that data to your site for additional reviews (not just reviews about your site but about your site's products) Works well and you can generally rank the pages pretty fast.
-
The consensus seems to be that it is whitehat when the content on each website justifies having different websites, and it is blackhat when you go with duplicate content. I will play the devil's advocate and say that this tactic typically makes me nervous because it is an option that seems to appeal to companies that don't want to invest in really outstanding content in the first place. That doesn't apply to everyone (Match.com and Chemistry.com would be two good examples of doing it right), but I think it makes sense to really nail one website before launching a second, and then having a plan to really nail the second.
-
Definitely not. It's a great way to dominate SERPs in your niche. We have a range of lead generation websites which we use in this way. As long as the content is unique then there is great benefit.
-
In my experience, no. We purchased another company in our niche and have maintained the website that came with the company. The product lines overlap almost completely, and both sites rank very well. We write unique content for each site and change the names of overlapping product lines. We're not taking any pains to be sneaky -- our corporate address appears on both sites, there's some interlinking, and they're on the same C-block. If Google wants to punish companies that do this, they haven't bothered creating an algorithm for it. I'm not sure they'd want to punish this, however.
-
No penalty but you have to be careful with duplicate content. The issue with this is going to be branding. If you get a follower of Site A then they probably won't follow site B (it's possible but doubtful) I create "competition sites" all the time to compete with me. Unique content and making sure that you don't have the same product description for same products can be a hassle but well worth it. Branding is big though. Think about Chemistry.com and Match.com; both are owned by the same company (IAC) I think it's a great strategy and has worked well for us.
-
Of course not. But here I am assuming that you are not copy-pasting the same information in two 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
-
Are links on sites that require PAD files good or bad for SEO?
I want to list our product on a number of sites that require PAD files such as Software Informer and Softpedia. Is this a good idea from an SEO perspective to have links on these pages?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SnapComms0 -
Partner Site In Bound Links
We have a staffing agency client that uses a 3rd party site (with different URL) to display open jobs for web viewers to see. However we are getting a bunch of backlinks from this site from the footer because it is set up as a White Label... Should I add a rel=nofollow to the links in the footer? Disavow the links from the site? Do nothing? I am not really sure. Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Aqabatech0 -
Is guest posting good for main link-building tactic for eCommerce site
Hello, Is guest posting going to be devalued? We've been offering a guest post with one link in the body pointing towards one of our articles, and one home page link in the bio. We're looking at doing this as the main link building strategy. Is this still a good idea now and in the future? Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Multiple Versions of Mobile Site
Hey Guys, We have recently finished the latest version of our mobile site which means currently we have 2 mobile sites. Depending on what device and Os will depend on which site you will be presented with.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | seekjobs
e.g.
iPhone 3 or 4 users on iOS4 will get version 1 of our mobile site
iPhone 5 users on iOS5 will get the new version (version 2) of our mobile site. Our old mobile site is currently indexed in Google and performing pretty well.
Since the launch of the second mobile site we have not see any major changes to our visibility in Google and so was curious My main concern here is duplicate content so I am curious can Google detect that we have 2 mobile site that we serve depending on device? And if Google can detect this, why has our sites not been penalized! Thanks, LW I know the first thing that comes to your mind is Duplicate content0 -
Blackhat Winners after Penguin 2.0
I know I'm not the only one that's seen this. After Penguin 2.0 some obvious blackhat SEOed sites flew up in the rankings. There's obviously a hole that hasn't been closed. I'm surprised it's been a month and that hole still hasn't been patched. I have no problem with other legit companies out ranking ours for various keywords. In that case I can feel alright knowing it's just something they were able to do that I wasn't but when I see complete blackhat sites ranking that's a whole different story. Estimated traffic before and after Penguin 2.0: http://goo.gl/gurXt What are they doing that's blackhat? Hidden text - compare the cached version vs. the live http://goo.gl/YYGDK 301ing lots of domains, many irrelevant. http://goo.gl/RjOJu Using a trade marked brand (steelers) - not SEO related but I'm sure the NFL wouldn't be happy. Linking between other domains they own. Notice how spammy these sites are. http://pittsburghwebdevelopment.org/2013/06/23/website-development-firm-website-design-pittsburgh/ http://seoinpgh.com/2013/06/23/website-designer-pittsburgh-affordable-web-design-in-pittsburgh-pa/ They were inflating their social presence. Wanted to show you but looks like twitter already took care of them https://twitter.com/seopittsburgh . Also making client sites link to them . http://pittsburghpaplumbing.com/2013/06/19/pittsburgh-plumbersplumbers-in-pittsburgh-paplumber-pittsburgh/ I've talked to other people and they've seen similar things. Thoughts, opinions? Can you find one good reason why this site would rank well for a competitive phrase?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | eyeflow0 -
Best way to handle SEO error, linking from one site to another same IP
We committed an SEO sin and created a site with links back to our primary website. Although it does not matter, the site was not created for that purpose, it is actually "directory" with categorized links to thousands of culinary sites, and ours are some of the links. This occurred back in May 2010. Starting April 2011 we started seeing a large drop in page views. It dropped again in October 2011. At this point our traffic is down over 40% Although we don't know for sure if this has anything to do with it, we know it is best to remove the links. The question is, given its a bad practice what is the best fix? Should we redirect the 2nd domain to the main or just take it down? The 2nd domain does not have much page rank and I really don't think many if any back-links to it. Will it hurt us more to lose the 1600 or so back links? I would think keeping the links is a bad idea. Thanks for your advice!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | foodsleuth0 -
Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
Hi All, In relation to this thread http://www.seomoz.org/q/what-happend-to-my-ranks-began-dec-22-detailed-info-inside I'm still getting whipped hard from Google, this week for some reason all rankings have gone for the past few days. What I was wondering though is this, when Google says- Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations? I assume my site hits the nail on the head- [removed links at request of author] As you can see I target LG Optimus 3D Sim Free, LG Optimus 3D Contract and LG Optimus 3D Deals. Based on what Google has said, I know think there needs to be 1 page that covers it all instead of 3. What I'm wondering is the best way to deal with the situation? I think it should be something like this but please correct me along the way 🙂 1. Pick the strongest page out of the 3 2. Merge the content from the 2 weaker pages into the strongest 3. Update the title/meta info of the strongest page to include the KW variations of all 3 eg- LG Optimus 3D Contract Deals And Sim Free Pricing 4. Then scatter contract, deals and sim free throughout the text naturally 5. Then delete the weaker 2 pages and 301 redirect to the strongest page 6. Submit URL removal via webmastertools for the 2 weaker pages What would you do to correct this situation? Am I on the right track?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mwoody0 -
From page 3 to page 75 on Google. Is my site really so bad?
So, a couple of weeks ago I started my first CPA website, just as an experiment and to see how well I could do out of it. My rankings were getting better every day, and I’ve been producing constant unique content for the site to improve my rankings even more. 2 days ago my rankings went straight to the last page of Google for the keyword “acne scar treatment” but Google has not banned me or given my domain a minus penalty. I’m still ranking number 1 for my domain, and they have not dropped the PR as my keyword is still in the main index. I’m not even sure what has happened? Am I not allowed to have a CPA website in the search results? The best information I could find on this is: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=76465 But I’ve been adding new pages with unique content. My site is www.acne-scar-treatment.co Any advice would be appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | tommythecat1