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
-
Phasing in new website - new content on www2
Hi Mozzers, I'm working on a large website redesign / redevelopment project. New sections of the website will be phased in over the next 12 months. The plan is to launch all new content on a subdomain (www2.domain.com) while the old site remains on www.domain.com. There will be no duplicate content across the www and www2 sites, as old content will be removed on www as it is replaced with new content on www2. 301 redirects will also be setup from old content on www to new content on www2. Once the new site on www2 is complete, everything will be moved to www, with a robust 301 redirect setup in place. Is this approach logical, and can you see any SEO implication for managing the migration in this way? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RWesley0 -
Website Traffic Is Down
Hi, My Website www.financeninvestments.com is down for almost now 2 years. I was receiving the good traffic before this but now the traffic is almost down. I want to again do something to get my Traffic back with some consistent efforts. So what efforts should i do to make this back.Pls suggest.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rahulsoni250 -
Duplicate content with URLs
Hi all, Do you think that is possible to have duplicate content issues because we provide a unique image with 5 different URLs ? In the HTML code pages, just one URL is provide. It's enough for that Google don't see the other URLs or not ? Example, in this article : http://www.parismatch.com/People/Kim-Kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix-1092112 The same image is available on: http://cdn-parismatch.ladmedia.fr/var/news/storage/images/paris-match/people/kim-kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix-1092112/15629236-1-fre-FR/Kim-Kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix.jpg http://resize-parismatch.ladmedia.fr/img/var/news/storage/images/paris-match/people/kim-kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix-1092112/15629236-1-fre-FR/Kim-Kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix.jpg http://resize1-parismatch.ladmedia.fr/img/var/news/storage/images/paris-match/people/kim-kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix-1092112/15629236-1-fre-FR/Kim-Kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix.jpg http://resize2-parismatch.ladmedia.fr/img/var/news/storage/images/paris-match/people/kim-kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix-1092112/15629236-1-fre-FR/Kim-Kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix.jpg http://resize3-parismatch.ladmedia.fr/img/var/news/storage/images/paris-match/people/kim-kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix-1092112/15629236-1-fre-FR/Kim-Kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix.jpg Thank you very much for your help. Julien
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Julien.Ferras0 -
Duplicate content but different pages?
Hi there! Im getting LOTS of "duplicate content" pages but the thing is they are different pages. My website essentially is a niche video hosting site with embedded videos from Youtube. Im working on adding personal descriptions to each video but keeping the same video title (should I re-word it from the original also? Any help?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sarevme0 -
Migrating to WooCommerce, similar product descriptions but with different urls, cant use variations.
Hi! Ime quite new to SEO and to woocommerce so please help out with this one.. We are migrating from Ithemes Exchange over to WooCommerce and i have come up with some issues. We are selling adhesives and some of the products have the same name and description, the only thing that seperates them are sometimes the widht, or the length on the roll.. As we have it now we have a separate product page for each widht and length. For example here http://siga-sverige.se/siga/fentrim-2-100/ and here http://siga-sverige.se/siga/fentrim-2-150/ The above product pages are for a product called Fentrim 2. its availiable in widhts from 75 to 300mm.. so, its six diffent products pages with more or less the same description. I get that this will create duplicate content, couse the description on the pages are similar.. We cant use variations in woocommerce, couse this cant be set up to exactly match our shipping needs, so, we need them on separate pages.. Soo, my plan is to set a new product page for Fentrim 2, ex http://siga-sverige.se/siga/fentrim-2 and then set that url as canonical url for the variations of the product.. Am i on the right track? Gratefull for any help on this one! / Jonas
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | knubbz1 -
Duplicate content question
Hi there, I work for a Theater news site. We have an issue where our system creates a chunk of duplicate content in Google's eyes and we're not sure how best to solve. When an editor produces a video, it simultaneously 1) creates a page with it's own static URL (e.g. http://www.theatermania.com/video/mary-louise-parker-tommy-tune-laura-osnes-and-more_668.html); and 2) displays said video on a public index page (http://www.theatermania.com/videos/). Since the content is very similar, Google sees them as duplicate. What should we do about this? We were thinking that one solution would to be dynamically canonicalize the index page to the static page whenever a new video is posted, but would Google frown on this? Alternatively, should we simply nofollow the index page? Lastly, are there any solutions we may have missed entirely?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheaterMania0 -
Automated Quality Content Acceptable Even Though Looks Similar Across Pages
I have some advanced statistics modules implemented on my website, which is very high level added value for users. However, wording is similar across 1000+ pages, with difference being the statistical findings.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi5
Page Ex 1: http://www.honoluluhi5.com/oahu/honolulu-condos/
Page Ex: 2: http://www.honoluluhi5.com/oahu/honolulu/metro/waikiki-condos/ As you can see same wording is used "Median Sales Price per Year", "$ Volume of Active Listings" etc etc....difference being the findings / results are obviously different. Questions: are search engines smart enough to realize the quality in this or do they see similar wording across 1000+ pages and p-otentially consider the pages low-quality content, because search engines are unable to identify the high level added value and complexity in pulling such quality data? If that may be the case, does that mean I ought to make the pages more "unique" by including a little piece of writing about each page to make them look more unique, even though it is not of value to users?0 -
404 for duplicate content?
Sorry, I think this is my third question today... But I have a lot of duplicated content on my site. I use joomla so theres a lot of unintentional duplication. For example, www.mysite.com/index.php exists, etc. Up till now, I thought I had to 301 redirect or rel=canonical these "duplicated pages." However, can I just 404 it? Is there anything wrong with this rpactice in regards to SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | waltergah0