2-websites focused on different markets but similar content
-
Hi all! I have a client who wants to branch out to another market (currently in Northern California and wants to open an office in Southern California), what would happen if we put up a second website that has similar content, but is exclusively for Southern California, with a different office address, and all the content geared towards Southern California market? There would be NO linking between the sites. Would that generate a penalty?
Thanks! BB
-
Thanks for your thoughtful response! Cheers!
-
Great. Thanks!
-
Hi,
I agree with Dennis here.
One question that you can ask yourself:
"Why should Google have two websites with substantially similar content in their index?"
So, the answer would be to come up with substantially unique content on both the websites so that both of them can pass Google's radar safely and justify their presence in their index.
In the past, I worked with a client who had multiple websites operating in the same niche but catering to different states in the US. With almost identical content on many of them, they were not at all ranking good in the search engines overall. We had the content rewritten in such a way that all of them had unique content (please note that all these domains still operated in the same niche but with slightly different keywords/phrases based on the differences in naming conventions in different states). This worked wonders. The results exceeded all the expectations of the client. There was a dramatic increase in the total number of pages from these domains in Google's index along with a whopping increase in overall ranking for many of the competitive terms in the search engines.
With substantially unique, updated, highly relevant and useful content, you will see a healthy and steady growth in your SEO ROI. Those were my two cents my friend. Good Luck to you.
Best regards,
Devanur Rafi
-
Hi BB
I have tried this before (on different boxes though) and it didn't cause any issues.
I would still advice to at least change bits of the content if possible. The design and everything could be the same.
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
-
Is This Considered Duplicate Content?
My site has entered SEO hell and I am not sure how to fix it. Up until 18 months ago I had tremendous success on Google and Bing and now my website appears below my Facebook page for the term "Direct Mail Raleigh." What makes it even more frustrating is my competitors have done no SEO and they are dominating this keyword. I thought that the issue was due to harmful inbound links and two months ago I disavowed ones that were clearly spam. Somehow my site has actually gone down! I have a blog that I have updated infrequently and I do not know if it I am getting punished for duplicate content. On Google Webmaster Tools it says I have 279 crawled and indexed pages. Yesterday when I ran the MOZ crawl check I was amazed to find 1150 different webpages on my site. Despite the fact that it does not appear on the webmaster tools I have three different webpages due to the format that the Wordpress blog was created: "http://www.marketplace-solutions.com/report/part2leadershi/", "http://www.marketplace-solutions.com/report/page/91/" and "http://www.marketplace-solutions.com/report/category/competent-leadership/page/3/" What does not make sense to me is why Google only indexed 279 webpages AND why MOZ did not identify these three webpages as duplicate content with the Crawl Test Tool. Does anyone have any ideas? Would it be as easy as creating a massive robot.txt file and just putting 2 of the 3 URLs in that file? Thank you for your help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DR700950 -
Is it best to condense 2 similar category pages?
After reading Rand's great article about building Seo focused pages to serve topics, not keywords (http://moz.com/blog/topics-people-over-keywords-rankings-whiteboard-friday ) I started looking at my site. Question: I have 2 very similar category pages, orginally built to go after similar but different keyword terms. For example, one is: domain.com/blue-rings.html and the other is domain.com/blue-bands.com. (bridal jewelry) "Blue" is just a hypothetical type. At one time I could rank for "blue-rings" and "blue-bands". But with google changes, I think it's better to focus on a general term, right? Not set up similar pages, with same product, for very similar keywords. I'm thinking that having these 2 pages could be actually hurting, as they are competing with each other. Any recommendations? Thanks folks! Ron
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | yatesandcojewelers0 -
Avoiding Duplicate Content - Same Product Under Different Categories
Hello, I am taking some past advise and cleaning up my content navigation to only show 7 tabs as opposed to the 14 currently showing at www.enchantingquotes.com. I am creating a "Shop by Room" and "Shop by Category" link, which is what my main competitors do. My concern is the duplicate content that will happen since the same item will appear in both categories. Should I no follow the "Shop by Room" page? I am confused as to when I should use a no follow as opposed to a canonical tag? Thank you so much for any advise!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Lepasti0 -
2 URLS pointing to the same content
Hi, We currently have 2 URL's pointing to the same website (long story why we have it) - A & B. A is our main website but we set up B as a rewrite URL to use for our Pay Per Click campaign. Now because its the same site, but B is just a URL rewrite, Google Webmaster Tools is seeing that we have thousands of links coming in from site B to site A. I want to tell Google to ignore site B url but worried it might affect site A. I can't add a no follow link on site B as its the same content so will also be applicable on Site A. I'm also worried about using Google Disavow as it might impact on site A! Can anyone make any suggestions on what to do, as I would like to hear from anyone with experience with this or can recommend a safe option. Thanks for your time!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Party_Experts0 -
Two Sites Similar content?
I just started working at this company last month. We started to add new content to pages like http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/t/49/-/181/1137/Bridgestone-Motorcycle-Tires. This is their main site. Then i realized it also put the new content on their sister site http://www.jakewilson.com/t/52/-/343/1137/Bridgestone-Motorcycle-Tires. the first site is the main site and I think will get credit for the unique new content. The second one I do not think will get credit and will more than likely be counted as duplicate content. We are changing this so it will no longer be the same. However, I am curious to see ways people think we could fix this issues? Also is it effecting both sits for just the second one?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DoRM0 -
Duplicate content via dynamic URLs where difference is only parameter order?
I have a question about the order of parameters in an URL versus duplicate content issues. The URLs would be identical if the parameter order was the same. E.g.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | anthematic
www.example.com/page.php?color=red&size=large&gender=male versus
www.example.com/page.php?gender=male&size=large&color=red How smart is Google at consolidating these, and do these consolidated pages incur any penalty (is their combined “weight” equal to their individual selves)? Does Google really see these two pages as DISTINCT, or does it recognize that they are the same because they have the exact same parameters? Is this worth fixing in or does it have a trivial impact? If we have to fix it and can't change our CMS, should we set a preferred, canonical order for these URLs or 301 redirect from one version to the other? Thanks a million!0 -
Duplicate content
Is there manual intervention required for a site that has been flagged for duplicate content to get back to its original rankings, once the duplicated content has been removed? Background: Our site recently experienced a significant drop in traffic around the time that a chunk of content from other sites (ie. duplicate) went live. While it was not an exact replica of the pages on other sites, there was quite a bit of overlap. That content has since been removed, but our traffic hasn't improved. What else can we do to improve our ranking?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jamesti0 -
Website rebranding, what should I worry about?
Hey guys, A client of mine will be doing a rebranding exercise, this include changing their brand name and their domain name. They are considered a well known brand within their industry (Their brand name shows up in Google's "Search Related to..." section) My question is: Apart from making sure all 301 are put in place,changing all the links to point to the new domain and doing PR exercise, is there anything else I should keep in mind / be aware of to ensure a smooth transition? Also can anyone come up with possible issues we might encounter during the move? Apart from having a significant drop in traffic and rankings? Thanks, Clement
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NextDigital510
