Client wants to rebrand but insists on keeping their old website live as well...
-
I am working with a client in the dental space that has an existing (11 year old) website for his practice. His domain is tied to his last name, which he would like to get away from because he plans to sell the practice in the next couple years.
Backstory: Prior to taking him on, he was working with an SEO agency out of India that were built him quite an ugly backlink profile. Once we discovered it, we immediately notified him about the risk of a penalty if left alone. He was riding high in Google SERP's so of course, it was of no concern to him. Needless to say about a year ago he was inducted into Google's "manual penalty club" for suspicious links. His site vanished in Google and all! Hooray! But no, not really...
We met with him to discuss the options, suggesting we clean up his backlink profile, then submit for reconsideration. Based on the time we told him it could take to make progress and be back up and running, he wasn't very excited about that approach. He said he wanted us to rebuild a new site, with a new domain and start fresh. In addition, he wanted keep his original site live since it is tied to his already thriving practice.
To sum it all up, his goal is to keep what he has live since his customers are accustom to using his existing (penalized) website. While building a new brand/website that he can use to build a cleaner backlink profile and rank in Google as well as to sell off down the line without having his name tied to the practice.
Question: Being that he has an existing site with the company NAP info throughout and the new site will also have the same NAP (just a different domain/brand), is there a "best way" to approach this? The content on the new site would be completely unique. I understand this approach is iffy but in his situation it makes sense to some extent. Any feedback or ideas on how to best handle having two sites running for the same dental practice?
If any part of my question is confusing or you need further details to help make a suggestion, please fire away and I will be happy to give as much detail as possible. Thanks Mozzers!
-
Happy 4th, Bryan, and good luck at your client meeting next week!
-
Thank you for that Michael! Great advice!
I love your scholarship idea, especially since my client is very involved as adjunct faculty at a large university here in Florida. That could be a great way to get a link back to his new site. For now I launched the new site but have it completely blocked. I will be meeting with him next week and am excited to discuss the points you and Miriam have brought up.
Thank you both again so much! Enjoy your weekend and be safe on the 4th!
-
I'll second Miriam's points, above. There's substantial risk here if both sites are going to be visible to Google.
I'd block the old site in in robots.txt permanently. I'd never redirect the old site to the new, even if cleanup had been done. From the penalty recovery work I've done, it sure feels like Google keeps some sort of permanent flag on your site, even after you've done the cleanup. New, good links don't seem to have as much effect as you'd expect.
For the new site, spend the $$ and do some PR/outreach and some solid, strong links in addition to the core directory links you get via MozLocal. Do some community service work that gets a press mention; offer a scholarship to dentistry students from a specific school, so that the school will link to your scholarship page. A few really good links from newspaper stories will work wonders for getting the new site to rank, both in the 3-pack and in regular organic.
-
Oh nice! I'll definitely check out that thread. Thanks!!
To clarify, since I am caught in a "who to please" battle of Client vs. Google, I was suggesting that since he "MUST" have the site launched by tomorrow morning that I block it from being indexed, which will allow me to launch it for him, yet, buy time to review with him the points you made and get everything sorted out with the old site penalty/duplicate NAP info before having Google come index the new site.
Does that make sense? Oy vey... what a mess lol
-
Hi Bryan,
It's my pleasure. On your last question, technical SEO just isn't my area, but wouldn't blocking Google more or less defeat the purpose of attempting to build organic authority for the new site leading up to the point of sale? I'm not quite seeing the logic there.
BTW, I just thought of you seeing this coincidental thread over at the Local SEO Forum: https://www.localsearchforum.com/local-business-citations/42391-new-dentist-new-site-same-address-phone-staff.html
-
Wow Miriam, thank you so much for that detailed response. I appreciate all of your insight, you made some excellent points to consider and discuss with him.
The good news is he is open-minded and keen to staying up-to-date with the times regarding online search, branding, etc. So I think the points you made will be of great value when I speak with him.
In addition, about a year ago I went ahead and slowly began cleaning up his link-profile (against his wishes) as somewhat of a "loyal customer favor". What can I say, I think he's a good dude that deserves to shine! I don't normally do work for free but he's been a great client for a number of years and is easy to work with, unlike the majority we've encountered. I've been able to reduce the penalty down from "site-wide" to just a "partial" penalty. Working on it here and there, trying not to spend too much time on it.
The issue is, he is looking to launch the site for a presentation he will be giving tomorrow, so my plan is to block it from being indexed until I get a chance to meet with him and sort everything out.
Even if I block the site from being indexed do you think Google will see it and associate it regardless because the Google map is embedded and NAP is in there?
Thanks again Miriam!
If anyone else has anything to add or suggest, I am all ears!
-
Hi Bryan,
You've provided such a good description of the scenario. What I see from what you're describing is that this client needs two resouces: a business advisor and an SEO company. If this client came to me, I would first want to know that his plans for selling his practice in a few years were being formulated with a professional analyst who would be able to describe all of the processes and laws involved. Only then would I begin to talk local SEO with him, and I would likely say something like this:
"No further steps should be taken until you (the client) commit to cleaning up the original site and getting out from under the penalty. You should not build a second site until you've cleaned up the first one. Why?
-
You don't ever want to put identical NAP on 2 local business websites. You will just further harm the original penalized site if you do this, and, you'll simultaneously be tying the new website to a penalized entity.
-
Normally, when one completely rebrands a business and builds a new website for it, you would be 301 redirecting the old website to the new one - in this case, particularly because of the needs of dental patients to connect with the dental practice they've gone to for the past decade, but also for obvious SEO purposes. However, you do not want to 301 redirect a penalized site to a new site, signalling to Google that someone they deem spammy now has not one but TWO websites that may not deserve to be trusted.
-
No savvy purchaser is going to want to buy a website that is tied to penalized website. Unless the purchaser doesn't do his research, he's not going to want that, and if he should buy the website that's tied to a penalized entity (either via NAP or 301 redirects) might he not take some form of legal action after the purchase when he hires a marketer who realizes you didn't disclose this info? I'm not a business advisor or a lawyer, so I don't know, but this would worry me.
-
You want to make top dollar when you do sell the practice. Right now, the penalty is decreasing the value of your business and may well be causing you to miss out on patients who could be growing your practice, right now, into an even more attractive offering. "
Those are things I'd have top of mind in speaking to the client, and maybe our community can add others.
By contrast, should the dentist be willing to own up to the mistake he made (hiring marketers who spammed Google) and pay for it by putting in the necessary work to recover from the penalty, the doors open wider as to what he can do. This is where a business analyst needs to step in to advise the dentist on matters like:
-
In a typical sale in the dental industry, does the purchaser normally want to buy the existing website as part of the package or does he want to name his business himself and start from scratch?
-
If he does want to buy the benefits of an existing website, but will not want to buy jonesdentistry.com, does it make sense for Dr. Jones (your client) to begin building the organic authority of a second, more generic domain (bostondentistry.com), while being sure that Dr. Jones' NAP is not anywhere on the new domain? Would building this second domain increase the value of the offering to the purchaser? How much?
-
If it would, when should this development of the second site take place, and at what point should jonesdentistry.com be redirected to bostondentistry.com. Will the offering be more attractive if, a year prior to the sale, Dr. Jones has already made the changeover to his own brand (changing from Jones Dentistry to Boston Dentistry), doing the permanent redirect, updating all of the existing citations to reflect the new brand, and helping his current patients to adjust to the new brand? Or should the redirects wait until after the purchase, leaving the work of citation management and client retention up to the purchaser?
Clearly, there are a lot of large and small details here that need to be hashed out. As a Local SEO, I can only help with some of them, and some I wouldn't dare answer because I lack the credentials to advise on sales, mergers, acquisitions, etc. But, the bottom line here is that if your client wants his website to be seen as an asset that will affect the ultimate price he receives from the sale, having that tied to a penalized entity is not the right move, and could possible even have legal consequences if he doesn't disclose that something he's selling is associated with a penalized entity.
Hope this helps and that you'll receive further feedback from the community.
-
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
-
I have followed all the steps in google speed ranking on how to increase my website http://briefwatch.com/ speed but no good result
My website http://briefwatch.com/ has a very low-speed score on google page speed and I followed all the steps given to me still my website speed doesn't increase
Local Website Optimization | | Briefwatch0 -
International SEO: reposting my own posts to different ccTLDs versions of my website
Hello there Moz community! Moz has been super helpful for me and the team, keep up the good work! I have searched online for answers regarding my specific situation, but I haven't found any. I'm asking my fellow Moz users in hopes of an answer. Maybe this thread will help others too. I currently have this domain: https://eco-reusable.com/ I would like to target Ireland and the UK with my keywords so I have just bought eco-reusable**.IE** and eco-reusable**.CO.UK** My questions are: 1. In order to rank as high as possible for Ireland, do I create a new website for eco-reusable.ie using the same pages but changing all the content slightly so it is not duplicate content OR do I point the eco-reusable.ie domain to eco-reusable.com? By having two sites, we will add more hours but we don't mind if that will be of benefit in the longrun for ranking high in Ireland. I have the same question for eco-reusable.co.uk
Local Website Optimization | | Gael_Regnault
If we have to create three websites and make similar content (not duplicate), we will if it will be better for ranking high in ireland for .ie, in the UK for .co.uk and for the rest of the world for .com 2. If we create three websites, can I safely "copy/paste" my blog posts without being punished by Google for duplicate content? If so, how much variation do we have to have for each of the three sites if we are writing blogs that are the same context. Thank you in advance! 🙂0 -
Dual website strategy
We have two websites (different businesses) in the technology sector that sell the same products on the same platform (OSC) but have different branding. We have tried to make the static content different and the user generated content is different. SEO as largely different. But the one site has much better rankings than the other. Whilst the under performing site is not responsive yet, I need to decide whether to merge the two businesses into one or continue on the two separate websites approach. I would only pursue the latter approach and invest further time and effort into this under performing website if I knew I was "on the right" track. My SEO knowledge is not extensive and so I would be interested in any views the community has? I note that kogan.com.au and dicksmith.com.au have a similar dual website approach (same company) and they are both major brands in Australia. I thank you in advance for any thoughts you may have.
Local Website Optimization | | Alpine91 -
Migrating to new website with new name and new content
Hi for the past few years I have been running a personal training company from the following domain name www.smpt.me. This has done well in the past and so has some authority in google as it was ranking well on page 1. Over the last 6 months I have set up a new website with some new business partners using the domain name www.healthbyscience.co.uk. This new website, whilst still a personal training website, has different content to the original. We want to use the new website rather than the old one and therefore my question is how I can use the old website to assist with the new website. Thanks
Local Website Optimization | | Health-by-Science0 -
Our Website is showing on the 11th place on Google Map
Hello, We are a photo studio in New York City, our website is
Local Website Optimization | | YourHollywoodPortrait
and our Google Plus page is http://yourhollywoodportrait.com/ https://plus.google.com/+YourHollywoodPortraitStudioNewYork When doing a search in maps for Boudoir Photography New York City we don't appear in the first 10 results, there is even a studio from New Jersey appearing before us. We have only 5* reviews, we did a bunch of local citations and still we are not in the first page of maps. Would you have any suggestions as to what we are doing wrong or should be doing? Thanks a lot for your help! Michael0 -
Moving to a new Location: SEO Website
I'm moving to a different state and want to keep my business and clients in both locations. Is it better to build two separate sites, one for Ohio locations and create a new site for Tennessee content? (www.ohiosite.com & www.tennesseesite.com) Or is it best to keep one site, and install a second wordpress site in a separate folder like ( www.site.com + www.site.com/tennessee )
Local Website Optimization | | morg454540 -
Subdomain for ticketing of a client website (how to solve SEO problems caused by the subdomain/domain relationship)
We have a client in need of a ticketing solution for their domain (let's call it www.domain.com) which is on Wordpress - as is our custom ticket solution. However, we want to have full control of the ticketing, since we manage it for them - so we do not want to build it inside their original Wordpress install. Our proposed solution is to build it on tickets.domain.com. This will exist only for selling and issuing the tickets. The question is, is there a way to do this without damaging their bounce rate and SEO scores?
Local Website Optimization | | Adam_RushHour_Marketing
Since customers will come to www.domain.com, then click the ticketing tab and land on tickets.domain.com, Google will see this as a bounce. In reality, customers will not notice the difference as we will clone the look and feel of domain.com Should we perhaps have the canonical URL of tickets.domain.com point to www.domain.com? And also, can we install Webmaster Tools for tickets.domain.com and set the preferred domain as www.domain.com? Are these possible solutions to the problem, or not - and if not, does anyone else have a viable solution? Thank you so much for the help.0 -
Ranking a Website that Services Multiple Cities
We have a website that offers services to various cities in a state. However, since we don't want to do keyword stuffing, how do we rank this website for all of these cities when it comes to the **title tags? **For example, how do we optimize the homepage title tag? Obviously I know we can't put all the cities into it, so how do we choose which city to use? I know we can add city/local pages and optimize them for those locations, but I'm referring specifically to the homepage and other main pages of the website. How do you determine which cities to use in those title tags?
Local Website Optimization | | SEOhughesm0