If I am starting a new business, similar to my existing business...

[DustChasersToronto]

Howdy MOZ community, I hope you are enjoying the last days of summer as much as we are here in Toronto-Canada.I own an Air Duct Cleaning business, I have done the web design as well as SEO, My website is currently ranking for quite a few keywords (some of them on the top of the SERPS) special thanks to MOZ for their awesome tools and blog posts.I am starting a Mobile Car Detailing business, Despite the fact that my Duct Cleaning domain is 5 years old with a DA of 42 and PA of 40 (main page).Would it be better for me to just add pages to my existing website (despite the fact that both businesses are in a cleaning niche) or would it be better for me to start another website from scratch?

Would it be a bonus for me in terms of my current DA to add pages to my existing website.like for example:

www.mywebsite.ca/Mobile-Auto-Detailing

or would I get penalized for it?

I thank you all for answering my question.

Alex

[MiriamEllis]

Hey Alex!

Christy invited me to pop by. Your 2 businesses exist in two totally separate categories, in Google's eyes: 'Air Duct Cleaning Service' and 'Car Detailing', so provided that you meet the following requirements, you should have no problems with running 2 legally separate businesses, even if they are both being run out of your home:

1. Have a separate phone number for each business that is always answered with the correct company name.

2. Have separate websites for each, with completely unique content on them (no shared content).

3. Do not interlink your sites in an attempt to cross promote them.

4. Build a unique citation set for each. Don't try to piggyback one business onto the other in your local business listings.

If you can meet all of the above requirements, you'll likely be best served by going with 2 unique businesses. If your categories were related (like Car Detailing and Car Wash) I'd be giving just the opposite advice, but as your two service types have nothing to do with one another, I vote for running two legally distinct companies. Hope this helps!

[Christy-Correll]

Aww, we all knew what you meant by SERPS. It makes them sound like something very important, and well, they are. ;)In the short-term, sure, the DA of your existing site has the potential to give any pages you add to it a little boost in terms of authority, provided that the pages are easy to find (i.e., they are crawlable, not too deep in your site architecture, are linked to from important pages on the site, etc.).

Now, back to your question. In the short-term, sure, the DA of your existing site has the potential to give any pages you add to it a little boost in terms of authority, provided that the pages are easy to find (i.e., they are crawlable, not too deep in your site architecture, are linked to from important pages on the site, etc.).

BUT in the long-term, I can't really say if taking this route has the potential to harm your whole site -- as we still need more information about how you are structuring your business(es) for these two categories of cleaning services, if the new one will have its own branding or not, and how the markets for each one compare beyond both being consumer markets (including service areas -- are those different, overlapping, or the same)?

In the meantime, I'm going to grab one of my colleagues who specializes in Local SEO to see if she can you can give you any insight into how the path you go down may affect your performance in local search results.

[DustChasersToronto]

Hi Christy thanks for your reply, I stand corrected on "SERPs".

They are both actually B2Cs, I looked at Sears website and they offer quite different services related in cleaning niche, they offer air duct cleaning, carpet cleaning, residential and commercial cleaning services as well as bunch of other services all from the same website.So I am just wondering would my current DA and the age of my domain be a benefit for my new venture? Or should I just start another website from scratch.

Thanks for your reply.

Alex

[ThomasHarvey]

From purely a customer point of view, I would setup a brand new website for this second business. I would much prefer the appearance that a company is a specialist in a single field than attempting to do everything.

[Christy-Correll]

Hi Alex, welcome to the Q&A forum --  and thanks for your kind words about our tools and blog. We're very glad they're helping you successfully rank your existing business website in the SERPs.

You refer to your mobile car detailing business as a new business. I am curious, are you actually setting it up as a business distinct from your air duct cleaning business, and will it have its own branding? And how do the markets for each one compare? (I'm guessing they are very different, with one B2B and the other B2C but I don't know what I don't know.)