Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Having 2 domains with same name - Impact on SEO
-
Hi AllAs we still dwindle with the rankings not coming in line with the efforts.I have a question:
We have 2 websites
1. http://www.example.com/ (which lost traffic and rank in Jan 2013). So we assumed that it was due to some penguin penalty. So we worked on disavow extra but nothing actually helped.Though there was no manual penalty mentioned in the GWT. Frustrated with this we thought of having another website 6 months back:
2. https://example.org/ - we did all the right things and by the book. But we are not seeing ranking here too. We did backlink analysis on all competitors and worked on only quality links they had. So all our links are highly highly relevant. But still the ranks are not moving beyond third page...in fact they moved to 6-7 page in last 2-3 days.
Please suggest ..
1. is it due to same name of domain (our brand name) causing the issue. If yes should we go for 302 or 301 redirect to save ourselves from any penalty that our last website may have got. We can not leave that name unattended as our cataloges etc have that website mentioned. i will expect a scientific reply here not gut feeling please.
2. Is it to do with .org domain extension that it should not be with commercial organizations like us
Kindly reply at the earliest
Regards
Aman
-
Thanks for reply Matt. Agreed these are some links which surely could be out of frustration. Can get them removed. But I have a question, check out our competitors who rank in India. You will be amazed to see their link building. Even one has a sub domain pligg sub domain for all kind of bad links even sex related etc.
However, how can you help us to achieve our goal. You can send a PM too... I will be very glad.
-
According to Ahrefs you have a 63% of referring pages contain the word "hair." Your top anchors are hair, loss, transplant, treatment, india
You had 3 links on .edu domains, all of which were spam comments on forums which have now been removed.
Even your latest links are not very clean:
- http://community.macmillan.org.uk/cancer_types/breast-cancer/f/38/p/51392/515703.aspx
- http://origin.wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=114120&p=6418306
Do you think those are natural backlinks passing a lot of value?
-
Thats a very Valid Suggestion...Thanks will surely do it
Also please see if you can to suggest something which is keeping out website from Rank
-
Aman,... well what you are doing is creating thin pages which over time might just risk a Panda Penalty. You might want to at least no-index those blog pages.
-
That right we could have... but was not ready for a 1% chance so thought this to be best.
Secondly we wanted to show the same copy
-
Why not just use rel canonical?
-
Hi Jonathan
These are just our news coverages posted in other websites. so to avoid content duplicacy we just post images.... apart from news events all categories have text posts
-
Yes!! Matt Definitely it is true for the first website. But now we have a in-house team working on this. That is why are very sure about the links and its relevancy.
But all the websites that are ranking have really bad links but still they rank. One odd keyword of our is on 1st page but main were on 3rd now pushed back to 7th.
Our content sharing is much wider than any one of them. We are simply perplexed why is this all happening to us.
1. We changed even to server in India for new website. That means both websites are on different servers. The new one is in India.
2. New website is secure https://
We know we are just there but there is something we are missing for sure and not able to find that out... it is becoming challenging question for us. Any no of people we ask noone tells us the right solutions
-
Why are your blog pages, just an image of a photocopy of someone elses article. You realise Google can't read the text from Images for SEO purposes right?
-
You had an SEO company working for you a few years ago, yes? They did some REALLY dodgy linking - and yes, you have link issues on the domains.
Unfortunately it looks like both domains have the same issue - you've bought links or had an SEO company do work in the past. Either way you need a disavow, site cleanup & new authority built to the site. The new site is really good looking. Good luck with it! Let me know if you need anything further.
-
Thanks Matt for the reply,
As We didn't receive any manual penalty in GWT whether it is Panda or Penguin, that caused us drop our ranking of .com site. But after that we studied thoroughly by ourselves a lot in order to know first whole about SEO, all Google updates, guidelines , and best practices etc. And revamped our old .com website from scratch; whether it is about new site structure, best UX from users point of view, unique content, internal linking, meta tags, curating high in-depth researched article or blog posts, building quality & high relevant links etc
We also found many many suspicious backlinks as well here and thought to cleanup that as well may be the reason behind.Yes, with keeping above all best SEO practices in mind to formed another new website https://example.org/ . BUT still we are facing STRANGE behavior to our website by Google, & not considered us to beat our competitors. We worked enough hard & done backlink profile analysis of our competitors and found many bad activities by them, still ranking in good position in SERPs than us.
-
Hi,
If you are using the same content on both website then that could be the major issue but If you are not using the same content then your site ranking is not down due to exact domain name with different extension.
Second, to clear up something "Google has no way of knowing that your domain is a 'new version' of the old one, unless you tell it. The method for this is a 301 redirect but as you are saying that your site's ranking went down due to algorithm update so there is no point to redirect old website to new.
You can do one thing put a splash page on old website like
"Old website has moved to new website
New website formally old website
& provide a 'click here' link to reach new website (*** No 301 redirect in your case**)
Thanks
-
Whenever you don't give us a specific domain to help on, you have to give as much info as possible. On the .com, after you disavowed did you build new authority or just assume the disavow would be enough? (It's not.) On the .com you said you lost traffic January 2013 which is Panda, not Penguin. So you were probably doing a whole lot of link cleanup to solve a problem you can't solve with link cleanup.
Given the other domain isn't ranking either, I'd guess you have some sort of Panda (content) issue. Duplicate content, repetitious & spammy titles, huge keyword stuffed meta keywords tags, thin or non-existent content, etc. Without seeing the site itself it's hard to say but this all reeks of Panda.
As to the questions:
-
No, it's not the domain name being similar. Without knowing the domains hard to say about 301.
-
Definitely not.
-
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
-
Multiple sub-category of the same name ? does that effect SEO
Hello, If I have multiple sub-category of the same name ? does that affect SEO for example I have the following category structure? domain/bmw/series5/2006.html domain/bmw/series5/2007.html .. etc domain/bmw/series3/2007.html domain/bmw/series3/2006.html ..etc domain/Acura/cl/2006.html domain/Acura/cl/2007.html .. etc I do use canonical url because I may have the same product in multiple categories but my question does google penalize me because I have the same (year) url key for multiple categories even though I use canonical url ? do I have any advantage in masking them filters vs sub-category from SEO point of view ? specially my goal is to have different meta title and meta description for each sub category ?
Algorithm Updates | | LKCservicesINC0 -
Do sub-domain visits do not count for website?
It's a common understanding that Google treats sub-domains as different websites. Does that mean visits of sub-domain do not impact website in-terms of ranking or visibility or reputation at Google?
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Google sets brand/domain name at the end of SERP titles
Hi all, I am experiencing that Google puts our domain name at the end of the titles in SERPs. So if ia have a title: "See our super cool website", Google would show "See our super cool website - Betxpert.com" in the SERPs Well. This is okay. Apart from the fact that i myself often put the brand name in the title AND the fact that Google mispells the site name. The brand is BetXpert with a upper case X...so when i get a SERP with "See our super cool website - BetXpert - Betxpert.com" I am annoyed 🙂 Any one out the know how to tell Google the EXACT brand name, such that they do not set a value the site owner does not want to have? -Rasmus
Algorithm Updates | | rasmusbang0 -
Server Location & SEO
So I just read an interesting Tweet: #SEO Tip: #Google takes into account the location of the server (the IP) when projecting the search results #web This is something I had not thought of. I suppose my question then is HOW does it factor this information into it's results? For some reason, one of our sites is hosted on a Canadian server. We are a cloud hosting company and we serve all of NA with data centers in the US and Canada... For whatever reason we've used the Canadian server farm for our web server. Could this possibly be hurting our NA google SERPs? Anyone have any thoughts on this?
Algorithm Updates | | jesse-landry0 -
Low Domain Authority - Rank Well For Competitive Keywords
I have been following a competitor's link profile on OSE for over 8 months. Their linkbacks have remained the same (3 follow, 9 nofollow links), all from low-quality directory sites. However, my competitor continues to improve in rankings and is now #1 for competitive keyword searches. How is this possible? Is there a way to hide your link profile or links from OSE? Any tips are appreciated - Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | TheSEODR0 -
Plural vs non-plural domain name
I'm sure this question has been answered and asked a 1,000 different ways but what would be the best domain name to use in the long term (2 years +)? The plural versions (examples.com) which has a decent domain authority and is ranking 1st in Google search results yet has less search volume or the singular version (example.com) that has no current SEO value for the search term that we'd like to target however the singular version of the keyword has a much higher search volume? so basically will it be better to have the exact match that has more volume or the plural form that has better rankings after 2 years of doing SEO for each domain? My guess is that using (examples.com) with the better domain authority and tightening the grip on its dominance in Google will still be more effective than having the exact match domain with more search volume for that keyword while performing the same amount of SEO even after two years. Any suggestions?
Algorithm Updates | | ydop0 -
Singular vs plural SEO
Hi everyone, OK I've been looking at the Google adwords keyword tool and it's thrown some of my On-page SEO into question (everything said here are examples, I haven't used any real life terms or figures). Lets say my page is about "Green Apples", let's say the keyword tool shows that the singular version "Green Apple" gets more searches (as an example). Should I optimize for the singular or the plural? Also lets say my title tag for that page is "Green Apples | Apples Galore UK" would Google/SEOmoz count that as an optimisation for the singular "Green Apple" or do the search engines take the title literally and don't differenciate between singular and plurals? Thanks in advance everyone! Regards, Ash
Algorithm Updates | | AshSEO20112 -
Using Brand Name in Page titles
Is it a good practice to append our brand name at the end of every page title? We have a very strong brand name but it is also long. Right now what we are doing is saying: Product Name | Long brand name here Product Category | Long brand name here Is this the right way to do it or should we just be going with ONLY the product and category names in our page titles? Right now we often exceed the 70 character recommendation limit.
Algorithm Updates | | mlentner1