Two websites vs each other owned by same company

[Rich_Coffman]

My client owns a brand and came to me with two ecommerce websites. One website sells his specific brand product and the other sells general products in his niche (including his branded product).

Question is my client wants to rank each website for basically the same set of keywords.

We have two choices I'd like feedback on-

Choice 1 is to rank both websites for same keyword groupings so even if they are both on page 1 of the serps then they take up more real estate and share of voice. are there any negative possibilities here?

Choice 2 is to recommend a shift in the position of the general industry website to bring it further away from the industry niche by focusing on different keywords so they don't compete with each other in the serps.

I'm for choice 1, what about you?

[RyanScollon]

I have came across similar situations before and I have to say that Choice 1 should be no problem at all as long as the content is fairly unique on each site. This should rule out the chance of duplicate content.

I guess it all depends on the volume, but for me I would go with choice 2. Simply because you then get to cover more spread and aren't stuck in one specific niche.

Truth is there is no right or wrong, both will work fine. It just depends on volume/competition

[Rich_Coffman]

Thanks for the insight Patrick.

For many reasons the websites must remain separate, good suggestion though.

Rich

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

I guess my main question is why two sites if you're trying to rank for the same set of keywords? Has he thought about combining? Moz has a great post on the potential benefit of combining two websites, but that's something you'll need to heavily research and chat with your client about. Here's that post.

If nothing else, more real estate sounds good to me so I would do option 1. Don't forget there are awesome Schema opportunities such as sameAs that can help you tie your properties together and help search engines understand your web presence. I would also make sure that you look into cross domain tracking so your client has a better understanding of his performance and eCommerce.

Hope this helps - good luck!