Can one business operate under more than one website?
-
Is it possible for a business to rank organically for the same keyword multiple times with different web addresses? Say if I sell car keys and I wanted to rank for "buy new car keys" and I set up two different website say ibuycarkeys.com and carkeycity.com and then operate under both of these, would Google frown upon this?
-
My pleasure, Carla! So glad to help.
-
Hi Miriam,
I really appreciate all the references and info. This is the kind of stuff that makes debates end quickly
As for EMD, we are actually thinking about rebranding since when we started our company EMD had all the benefits.
Thanks for all the tips
Carla
-
Hi Carla,
Here's a shortie-but-goodie from Barry Schwartz on this topic:
http://www.seroundtable.com/google-one-site-locations-15454.html
Note the quote from Goolger, John Mu, on that one.
http://www.seroundtable.com/google-one-site-locations-15454.html
And here is Google and Your Business forum Top Contributor Linda Buquet's educated opinion on this:
What the client needs to understand is that:
-
Their local business can have only 1 Google+ Local listing, linking to a single domain. If Google finds the business name attached to multiple websites, Google will be confused and lack 'trust' in the data cluster they create for the business. Similarly, if any other element of the business' core NAP (name-address-phone) is found on more than one website, this will cloud Google's understanding of the business. This can lead to accidental duplicate listing creation and ranking problems.
-
Your client will be splitting up their authority across multiple domains instead of building great authority on a single domain, where every action taken goes toward strengthening the brand.
-
Let's not forget Google's big recent targeting of EMDs. Though we didn't see drastic effects from this in Local, we all have received fair warning from the EMD penalty that Google is down on thin content, exact match domain sites. What I see in Local is a single business owner publishing thin and duplicate content on a set of domains like sanfranciscoplumber.com, sanjoseplumber.com, sanrafaelplumber.com, etc., and I believe Google has made it pretty clear that this type of activity is under scrutiny. I think there are definite risks associated with a multi-site approach.
-
And let's consider how this looks to the most important audience - potential customers. All local businesses must work to develop an authoritative, memorable brand that comes to mind instantly when a service is needed. If my hot water heater stops working, what is that brand, that domain name? Is it sanjoseplumber.com, sanrafaelplumber.com??? I can't remember. But if it's StanislovPlumbing.com - an honest representation of the business name that matches branding - and I've used their services before, my chances of remembering/recognizing them is much higher. To me, this is a very strong argument against splitting up brand/authority across multiple sites.
These are just a few reasons. I could likely come up with more, but honestly, I can't think of a single instance in which I would recommend that a small local business owner try to operate multiple websites. It is completely possible to rank well for a variety of service/geo terms with a single website with the right approach. Good luck in educating your client about this, Carla. Feel free to share this post with him, as well as the links I've provided.
-
-
Hi Miriam,
I have a client who has a local business and really wants me to create multiple websites to go after different keywords. I have advised him not to do this but he keeps insisting. Can you recommend any great articles from a well know source talking about this? Does Matt Cutts have anything on this issue?
Thanks
Carla
-
Good discussion going on here, and thought I would add, if the business is Local in nature, rather than virtual, I strongly recommend against a multi-site approach. I wanted to clarify this in case members take a look at this thread and own a local business.
-
Hi Greg
Yes, you are right and we actually put this forward to the client, there was actually more benefits to doing it this as we saw the situation. If nothing more than the fact its all under the one "domain"
But after we established with the client that we would need two sites, be it two separate domains or using sub-domains, the client actually insisted that they wanted the two domains option.
We found it difficult to put a concrete case in front the of the customer to justify going down the sub-domain route considering they were so adamant to use two separate domains.
Customer in king, they pay the bills, we rolled with them on the two domains ...
I would be interested though how the sub-domain option would have worked to be fair, we had planned to use the main domain as more of an information portal , utilize that for targeting their key-phrases, it would have left us a lot more room to be more versatile with actual content as with all e-Commerce stores.
Its defiantly the more conventional approach people take ... but their is nothing conventional with this client
John
-
Great insight John, thanks for the words of wisdom.
What are you thoughts regarding sub-domains? You could have also created a sub-domain and geo targeted a specific country for each.
Example:
www.website.com (Global)
uk.website.com (UK Only)
au.website.com (Australia Only)
I'm not sure if sub-domains or new domains have more weight than the other, but it makes sense to keep the site and brand as a whole intact rather than creating new domains and just geo target each for their respective country/audience.
Greg
-
Well on the contrary, I am not so sure the term passe comes to mind ... Different situations call for different approaches, you got to be versatile in this game, there is no fire sure remedy for each and every client or project.
We have an e-Commerce client who want to target both the UK and Irish markets with immediate effect, and after a lot of consideration ,and due to their nature of business, we and they decided to go with two e-Commerce stores to two separate domains (.ie & .co.uk).
In all senses of purpose, they are the same websites, well selling the exact same products. Same site structure, same CSS, same JS etc etc.
The approach we took was to vary the product descriptions, have different URLS for the same product on both sites, have different image names and alt tags on both sites ... create different topics about the product categories on both websites, and lastly for the onsite optimisation ,we created two separate blogs on both websites with totally unique content (no cross over for the blogs).
Off page ,we started two separate social campaigns along with two separate online marketing campaigns supported by two separate ad words campaigns.
Granted there was more work involved than creating one website and target two countries, but with regards to budget for the client, it was relatively similar doing it the way we did it.
So the results ,well its rare it happens but we where pretty happy with the results so far 3 months down the line, both sites are fully indexed and ranking well in the SERP for their respective countries ...
The major key-terms we need both to rank for last week broke into the top 50 in the UK and is 11 in Ireland (really high competitive term), but this is to be expected regardless of how we ran the campaign, but the LTK and less competitive terms are already ranking first page already ...
We have been totally able to optimize each website for its respective country, from link building through to dynamic content
So does it work, yes, is it worth it ,well that depends on your business and clients situation, is it more expensive, well that depends on how your look at your budget, or your clients.
But one thing I can say for sure, would we have achieved the success we have for the client so far had we one website targeting two separate counties, not on your Nelly would we have, no way by 3 months into the campaign.
Just thought bit of perspective from someone going through the situation live might help
Regards
John
-
Hi Steve,
Egol is completely right. This approach is very expensive to maintain and Google frowns upon duplicate content.
This approach is very passe
-
Ten years ago lots of people had lots of sites competing for the same keywords. The shortcut that they usually took was to use the same content on all of those sites. That approach is dead now... and the approach of using slightly modified text is dead too.
Google doesn't care if you have two websites on the SERPs for the same keywords as long as those two websites are absolutely unique and offers value to visitors. I have info sites and retail sites in the same SERPs. No problem -- at least none yet.
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
-
Where can I find either web directories or decent sites that will link back to me...without paying thru the nose?
Hi Community! For starters, from my question, you can probably determine that I am either a novice, or very low intermediate SEO person. We all know, links are king with our friends at Google. I am a recently-retired IT person with a very small freelance IT company (just me), and I'd like to generate more leads/business. I'd be thrilled with one or two small jobs per week to supplement my pension. I've used the MOZ tools only to determine the majority of my competitors have like a thousand links, whereas Google reports me as having 97 links. My on-page grades are all upper 90s and a couple are at 100%. I am not targeting really competitive keywords, so that's not my problem. My problem is my DA, which is sitting at a mere 20...pause to laugh! I don't want to pay thru the nose for high DA links for the obvious reasons. I submitted my URLs to as many directories as I could find. Would anyone have a decent list of sites where I could submit my URL to get some more links? Thanks guys and Gals! Willy
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | NewSEOguy0 -
Website in capital letters
Hello, Is website in capital letters affect SEO ?? or we can apply with it ?? please help thnx in advance..!!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | iepl20040 -
Dodgy backlinks pointing to my website - someone trying to ruin my SEO rankings?
I just saw in 'Just discovered' section of MOZ that 2 new backlinks have appeared back to my website - www.isacleanse.com.au from spammy websites which look like they might be associated with inappropriate content. 1. http://laweba.net/opinion-y-tecnologia/css-naked-day/comment-page-53/ peepshow says: (peepshow links off to my site)07/17/2016 at 8:55 pm2. http://omfglol.org/archives/9/comment-page-196 voyeur says: (voyeur linking off to my site)
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | IsaCleanse
July 17, 2016 at 7:58 pm Any ideas if this is someone trying to send me negative SEO and best way to deal with it?0 -
Secondary Domain Outranking Master Website
IEEE is a large professional association dedicated to serving engineers. The IEEE Web Presence is made up of flagship sites like IEEE.org, IEEEXplore, and IEEE Spectrum, mid-tier sites like Computer.org, and smaller sites like those dedicated to specific conferences. It is unclear exactly when this started - but searches in Google for [ieee] currently return ieeeusa.org before ieee.org. This is troublesome, as users are typically looking for IEEE.org with such a general query. ieeeusa.org is a site that has a much narrower focus - it is dedicated to public policy. IEEE.org is one of the strongest domains - I am thinking that this is a glitch of some sort. I am removing a stale sitemap that is referenced in robots.txt (though again, I'm not seeing any issues with other pages - its just two queries that are trouble: [ieee] and [about ieee]. And its noticeable in analytics 🙂 http://ieee.d.pr/hMg0/YhklCw7Z What do you think? 🙂
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | thegrif3290 -
Google is giving one of my competitors a quasi page 1 monopoly, how can I complain?
Hi, When you search for "business plan software" on google.co.uk, 7 of the 11 first results are results from 1 company selling 2 products, see below: #1. Government site (related to "business plan" but not to "business plan software")
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | tbps
#2. Product 1 from Palo Alto Software (livePlan)
#3. bplan.co.uk: content site of Palo Alto Software (relevant to "business plan" but only relevant to "business plan software" because it is featuring and linking to their Product 1 and Product 2 sites)
#4. Same site as #3 but different url
#5. Palo Alto Software Product 2 (Business Plan Pro) page on Palo Alto Software .co.uk corporate site
#6. Same result as #5 but different url (the features page)
#7. Palo Alto Software Product 2 (Business Plan Pro) local site
#8, #9 and #10 are ok
#11. Same as #3 but the .com version instead of the .co.uk This seems wrong to me as it creates an illusion of choice for the customer (especially because they use different sites) whereas in reality the results are showcasing only 2 products. Only 1 of Palo Alto Software's competitors is present on page 1 of the search results (the rest of them are on page 2 and page 3). Did some of you experience a similar issue in a different sector? What would be the best way to point it out to Google? Thanks in advance Guillaume0 -
Website is not stable on maps.google.com
My website is daily showing different position on maps.google.com and for the last few days like yesterday it was on 21st position on some keyword and today it is no where and same with other keywords. Is this a Google Dance ?? what can be its period ? and what is the solution to handle it ??
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mnkpso0 -
Google places VS position one ranking above the places.
Hi Guys, Will creating a new Google places listing for a business have any effect their current position one spot for their major geo location keyword? I.e restaurants perth - say they are ranking no 1 above all the places listings if they set up a places listing would they lose that position and merge with all the other places accounts? Or would they have that listing as well as the places listing? I have been advised it could be detrimental to set up the places account if this is the case does anyone know any ways around this issue as the business really needs a places page for google maps etc. Appreciate some guidance Thanks. BC
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Bodie0 -
We seem to have been hit by the penguin update can someone please help?
HiOur website www.wholesaleclearance.co.uk has been hit by the penguin update, I'm not a SEO expert and when I first started my SEO got court up buying blog links, that was about 2 years ago and since them and worked really hard to get good manual links.Does anyone know of a way to dig out any bad links so I can get them removed, any software that will give me a list of any of you guys want to do take a look for me? I'm willing to pay for the work.Kind RegardsKarl.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | wcuk0