Hosting two websites

[Richard555]

Hi guys,

I work with a company that has a business to consumer (B2C) website and a business to business (B2B) website selling the same product.

The content will differ but the structure / templates will be similar across both sites.

Any recommendations or suggested reading to ensure both sites appear in Search?

Many thanks in advance!

Richard

[Matt-Williamson]

No Problem Richard - Glad I could help - as you say two sites is twice the work to manage and market so it dilutes your effort.

Good luck with your new project

[Richard555]

Great stuff Matt, many thanks, much appreciated.

The B2B website has been live a few months, while the B2C website is just built and goes live in a few days.

I only started with them this week so no involvement in their decision to build a second website, however the B2B domain name would not be appropriate for a B2C market.

I would suspect in the months time they may integrate & redirect the B2B domain to the B2C domain (using 1:1 301's). Having just one domain would be much better for SEO (and day to day website management to).

Many thanks again Matt, you're a star!

Richard

[Matt-Williamson]

Hi Richard - one quick question - are your sites going to be on separate domains and are these domains going to be linking to each other? I am just wondering whether you are trying to keep both sites completely separate or whether you are making it clear that they different parts of the same business? If so have you thought about having both sites on one domain with your homepage making it clear there are two separate areas you service - B2B and B2C? By doing this you will benefit in the long run from a more powerful link profile and therefore greater domain authority and ranking ability - one link will benefit both sides rather than just one domain if you have them separate. It is better to try and build one rich information resource for customers than split it in to several in my opinion. However this all depends on whether having both sides of the business sat under their own folder on one domain is appropriate to your whole customer base? Doing this would also resolve any potential concerns you may have about hosting mulitple websites under separate domains on one server. You often see sites that are trying to sell to customers and to potential resellers having both types of content for the same product on one site rather than separate.

If you have them separate and both rank well you are likely to get customers looking at each site anyway when carrying our research in the SERPs.

However if this is an issue then let put your mind at ease - there shouldn't be a problem with having two separate sites on separate domains as you are making sure that the content is unique. Obviously just make sure you don't have a mass of links between the two. A link to acknowledge their relation is fine though. The only time there would be an issue is if you are trying to hide the relationship from Google and you aren't as you are trying to serve to different customer bases with unique content. Shared hosting on the same IP is very common these days and the only time it has been an issue in the past is when one site on that IP has been penalised. This impacted on other sites - however this even seems to be less common now with more sites appearing and more shared hosting..

I am just trying to find out why you have chosen the structure you have from an SEO viewpoint and making it easier to build authority for your companies web presence.

[Richard555]

Many thanks for that.

I was thinking perhaps there might be some hosting issues to be aware of?

[BeardoCo]

If the content differs then you will be fine.  There are literally millions of sites using the same structure and template.  Just make sure all your content is original and it doesn't reflect similar content on both sites.