Duplicate site with same content
-
Hi All,
I hope someone can assist, We have 2 brands that sell the exact same products. We have a main and an off brand. We just redeveloped the main brands site and now have to do the off brand (was owned by another company and we acquired them, we then changed their products to match ours).
Am I able to pretty much clone the site and just change the branding and rel canonical each page to its original on the main brand? Granted I will lose rankings but will it be something that will affect anything else?
I want to do this so it saves us time in updating products on both sites (and avoids errors in incorrect pricing).
Would appreciate some guidance with this one
Cheers
Dave
-
Thanks Gents,
Great answers - much appreciated
-
Hi David,
You will lose indexation for the non-canonical URLs, so keep that in mind. If you don't get much organic traffic to the off-brand, than that's probably not a problem.
If that is the case though, I'm wondering why even build out a site for the off-brand?
-
Hi Dave,
You are right to look at cross-domain canonical to resolve this. This is absolutely what it is intended for. Google gives you more guidance on how to ensure this is done correctly, here.
Will it affect anything else? Well, it shouldn't, but a little due diligence after the work has been completed will help confirm all is OK. An audit of the two sites will help you to see that everything is mapped correctly.
-Andy
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
-
After Maccabees should I consolidate some of my content?
I'm a local dentist and have a very successful 'veneers price' blog page. People really want to know the cost of veneers and it gets hundreds of visits a day locally and nationally. I also have a main Veneers services page talking about how you get veneers and what they are etc. This gets lots of local visitors but less nationally. I have recently tried to replicate it's success with 'dental implants price', 'tooth whitening price' and others but they've just bombed. I replicated the style and the blogs are similar in structure, same links etc - but obviously totally unique content and topics. The price articles get no search and it's seemed to hurt the main services pages too. They are all linked to one another in a systematic and helpful-to-the-user hierarchy and structure. Maccabees doesn't seem to have made any difference to the veneers traffic but should I consolidate the other price articles into their respective main pages or leave it and see what happens. They have been at less than position 20 for months now. Whereas if you type in Veneers Cost UK, you'll probably see us in the featured snippet and position one or two. How do I know whether google regards the price of something to be a different topic from that thing and worthy of it's own page? Do they just want everything all on one massive page? That seems a bit clumsy to me. Thanks! 🙂
Local SEO | | Smileworks_Liverpool0 -
One company, two audiences. Ok to make two sites?
I have researched and researched on this question, and I'm still not satisfied. Most of the answers on the Moz forum and otherwise are all from 2013, as well. So, I thought I'd bring it up again. I have two distinct audiences for a real estate business I'm working with (very different needs and interests): Farm Buyers Residential Buyers My client is wanting to expand their presence in the farm market. Their main competitor is ranking for, more or less, an exact domain name match. They want to spin up a site focused only on farm buyers. Here are the pros/cons in my mind of creating a separate site: Pros: Reaching/targeting a specific audience (better user experience), having domain name with keywords (I won't keyword stuff...promise), a site completely devoted to content regarding farms, a blog completely devoted to farms (we have a content strategy in place) Cons: NAP issues (same address), splitting up domain authority, a bit of brand confusion (though the same logo/brand will be on both sites) In my mind, the pros outweigh the cons. Any ideas on how to address the cons? I could just not include address and phone, but that seems ridiculous...catering to the bots and not the user. Thanks, everyone!
Local SEO | | Gabe_BlueGuru
Gabe2 -
Will I get Penelized for having a .co.uk site AND a .com site?
Hi Mozers, I have a very important pitch coming up which needs to tackle a questions about international SEO. My client currently has a .com website, but we are debating internally about creating a .co.uk website too so that we can localise content for the UK versus American English on our .com site. Currently, our clients proposition is global, so we made the decision to create a .com website but using American English spelling as a large chunk of English speakers in the world use American English over British English. However, we want to grow the business within the UK, and therefore want to use British English language. Hence creating a .co.uk website. Now, my question is this.... the new .co.uk website will be identical content as the .com website, except for a few spelling changes and the way we phrase certain sentences. How would we be able to run both a .co.uk site and .com site without being penelized from Google for plagarism? Would it involve href lang tags? Server hosting location? Any ideas from you guys out there?
Local SEO | | Virginia-Girtz0 -
Searchmetrics Google ranking factors study says content gaining while links losing in importance ? Any View About this Post.
I am very Curious about it anyone please update about this http://searchengineland.com/searchmetrics-google-ranking-factors-study-says-content-gaining-links-losing-importance-265431
Local SEO | | MTPixels0 -
How can I personalize content based on a state/region? Is it possible?
I'm getting a lot of traffic from different regions throughout the US. I need to personalize the content in my website or on a certain landing page based on the users state/region. Is it possible? For example, forwarding a user that lands on page "x" to page "y" if he's from California and to page "z" if he's from South Carolina. And of course, can this somehow affect my rankings in Google? Thanks!!
Local SEO | | OrendaLtd0 -
Video marketing strategy for new sites - Youtube / third party vs self hosted?
Howdy Mozzers, We are a new UK solar comparison site looking to implement video to help buid our site traiffic / leads. We currently make a 1 min video summary of our blog posts using Animoto and embed the video at the top of the blog post on our site. The original thought of introducing video was to help our blog posts rank higher. My question is, which of the following strategy is the best for building traffic and generating leads for our site 1. Hosting video on Youtube and embedding it on our site 2. Hosting video on Animoto and embedding it on our site (not sharing on youtube) 3. Hosting the video on our own domain and not sharing it on Youtube and other third party sites 4. Embedding the video from youtube or animoto on our site and sharing it everywhere (dailymotion, vimeo,etc) Our target audience is UK only for the time being. We would like to build traffic quickly and are focused on the short term. I would be appreciate any replies discussing the different advantages disadvantages of the options and a final personal opinion. Thanks!
Local SEO | | MozBoy0 -
What is the best sites for Press Release
I am looking at all the various press release sites out there. I have a local business relocating and we want to use a press release to get the information out there and hopefully get the move picked up by a local newspaper. Any experience/suggestions on best PR sites?
Local SEO | | bricegump0 -
Mobile Options for indexing mobile sites and live sites.
Our development team has noindexed our mobile versions of desktop pages in Wordpress. I am wondering if there is a negative impact to noindexing the mobile pages? We have a desktop version of the page live so the content is available in both locations and I believe we would be avoiding duplicate content issues by no indexing the mobile page, is there a reason I am missing that I would not want to noindex my mobile pages? Thank you in advance for your assistance.
Local SEO | | Highline_Ideas0