Best SEO practice - Umbrella brand with several domains
-
Hi, we have several blogs and comparison sites on specific topics. All the domains rank on top positions in very competitive niche markets. We think that we can get more profit out of the domains when we put them under an umbrella brand. Customers that visit domain A can then also find products easily on domain B. We see this for example on health.com, with several brands in the top.
To maintain or improve our rankings i'm looking for specific information for the link structure. For example, is it better to have the 'about us'/rel=author on each domain, with contributors on that specific domain or is it better to have them all in the (umbrella) brand domain.
At the moment we have the structure like this:
domainA.com, domainA.com/blog, domainA.com/about-us and domainB.com, domainB.com/blog, domainB.com/about-us.
I think to maintain the rankings it is best to keep specific content (like blog/ about us) on the domain. So is it the best to just do side wide links with a logo (like health.com) and what about hosting? We work with wordpress, so all domains will be hosted on one ip? when we use the multiple site option of WP?
All information on this topic is more than welcome
-
Thanks for the question:
"To maintain or improve our rankings i'm looking for specific information for the link structure. For example, is it better to have the 'about us'/rel=author on each domain, with contributors on that specific domain or is it better to have them all in the (umbrella) brand domain."
I'd say that it comes down to how much you want to differentiate your current brands from each other. If you want to keep them quite distinct and each one has it's own team / writers / USPs etc, then you are best to have each domain have it's own sections.
"I think to maintain the rankings it is best to keep specific content (like blog/ about us) on the domain. So is it the best to just do side wide links with a logo (like health.com) and what about hosting? We work with wordpress, so all domains will be hosted on one ip? when we use the multiple site option of WP?"
In terms of cross-linking, I'd say that you should try to do this where relevant and as James has pointed out below, as long as you're not doing this in huge volumes, you should be fine and not trigger any problems with Google. The only time you may want to be careful is where your domains are competing for the same types of keywords. I would avoid cross-linking too much with exact match keywords as this could be seen as manipulate, I'd keep it on brand and to relevant pages.
If the domains you own are in the same niches, then you may hit problems of them competing against each other. I'm not sure if this is the case? If they are in the same niche, then Google certainly can look at things like IP address and footprints that links the sites together, it is hard to know to what extent this would harm you but Google certainly prefer to show diversity in search results rather than having multiple sites from the same company.
-
I would if possible try and concentrate on a single brand/domain as opposed to multiple domain - on the assumption that an identical piece of content will rank higher on a single strong domain than it would on any of your less strong segmented domains.
With a single domain you also don't have the issue of worrying about how to cross market across domains (although as you point out many sites do so - Moz / OSE being one example) . Of course this also gets rid of the worry about whether google may see cross linking between multiple domains as a 'Link Network' - unlikely if it is just a few domians but if you are talking about 10's of different domains then this could well raise a flag in googles alogrithm.
It is still unclear as to how google treats multiple domains owned by the same companies, and on the same theme. Many websites have sub domains for their blogs and other sub-sections and the standard thought a few years ago was that you were better off moving those into folders. However, I think things have now changed such that if there are enough connecting signals it doesn't matter if its a sub domain or sub folder. When considering this, as a subdomain is technically a separate site, you would think that if similar connecting signals where to appear between 2 separate domains, then Google could (and probably should) treat them as they would sub-domains. However, whether there is some, all or no truth in this is likely to be a debate that will be speculation until Google confirms something along these lines.
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
-
Anything wrong in linking to homepage from all sub domain pages?
Hi, We have 6 sub domains which are forums, guides, etc. They have their own visitors for the related queries. We are planning to divert some of them to the website to promote our product with latest content. We are planning to add a link from every page of sub domain to our website homepage. This makes additional thousands of internal links flowing to website homepage. Will this kind of internal linking structure hurts? Any risks involved? Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz1 -
On-page SEO opinion on this Wordpress theme
Hi everyone. As an SEO agency we've been moving more toward genesis themes, however we have a client who really wants to redesign his website using the following theme: http://themeforest.net/item/this-way-wp-full-videoimage-background-with-audio/943634 - the theme would be images with no audio on the homepage. He is a remodeling contractor and likes the design and functionality of the theme. I'd like to get others feedback and opinions on what you think about the on-page SEO of this theme? Thanks.
Web Design | | WillWatrous0 -
Who's best but affordable custom shopping cart provider (e.g. 3dcart, big commerce, shoppingcart)?
I'm planning to put up a buy and sell site for shoes where people can upload shoe listings on their own something like ebay.com though we're not the ones who will process the payment. The site we're planning doesn't have a buy/checkout button and paypal integration so it will look like a catalog. We will just add a contact number/email in the product listing so a buyer can contact and personally meet the seller. Let me know if this can be done in Wordpress + e-commerce plugins. I would also like to know if there are custom shopping cart providers that allow Facebook or Twitter login/sign up integrated in the platform. Let me know if this is also possible in Wordpress by adding a plugin. Thanks in advance!
Web Design | | esiow20130 -
Adobe "Muse" on SEO?
Anyone ever had any experience with this tool? Any feedback on how adobe muse does with SEO and markup is appreciated! update 1: Really? nobody has any comment on this?
Web Design | | Raydon0 -
Wordpress Frameworks for SEO - Genesis - Does it Get Any Better?
I'm sure there's a ton of people in this community running Wordpress, any Genesis developers/users out there? For anybody who doesn't know, Genesis is a parent framework for building wordpress child themes. It saves a ton of time for people that aren't too handy w/ php (like me). I'm working on a few sites locally with it right now, and it's really impressive. I'm seriously never planning on using another WP framework. It also integrates perfectly with Yoast SEO, which is something not all frameworks do. So I thought I'd try to get some input from the community here, anybody have another framework they like? Or have an opinion on the SEO benefit of genesis? Would love to hear...
Web Design | | SVmedia0 -
Best Place for Back Linking
Does anyone have a good list or know where I can find one to show me the best sites to create some organic back links to mine, preferably without paying for them? Thanks to those who help, Craig Fenton IT
Web Design | | craigyboy0 -
Wordpress SEO Change of Structure
Hi, I have a Wordpress SEO Question. I ran the SEOMOZ checker on my website and it discovered roughly 70 of my 250 blogs had a URL length problem. I have removed the year and month from the WP structure as I read elsewhere that it is not important. The blogs displayed as follows: domain.com/blog/2011/02/contents-of-the-blog and the new structure is: domain.com/blog/contents-of-the-blog I have resubmitted the new structure to Google Webmaster Tools XML and updating the on-page sitemap on my main site. My blog was cached on 25<sup>th</sup> October and seems to be caching every 7 days, my website cached on the 24th and I wonder if I should do any follow up work to ensure the content gets crawled properly. a) Individually 301 redirect the old URLs to the new. b) Individual Canonical links for each. c) Adding the old pages to the robots file and disallowing. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Web Design | | tdsnet0 -
Stuck with domain: www.kumficars.co.uk
Hi community, I was hoping you could help me. I have a website which I'm running for a client, www.kumficars.co.uk, and it's not featuring at all on google for the primary keyword: Taxi Knutsford I have absolutely no idea why. I've produced a campaign report and am acting on it now, but even that didn't pull much up other than a missing meta description tag, which I'm updating now. Other than that, I can't see any reason why the website shouldn't rank - the competition isn't even difficult! Can anyone shed some light please?
Web Design | | ArtifexDesign0