Combining Two Sites With Similar Domain Authority
-
Hello,
We run two sites with the same product, product descriptions and url structure. Essentially, the two sites are the same except for domain name and minor differences on the home pages. We've run this way for quite a few years. Both sites have a domain authority of 48 and there are not a large number of duplicate incoming links.
I understand the "book" to say we should combine the sites with 301's to the similar pages. I am concerned about doing this because "site 2" still does about 20% of our business.
We have been losing organic traffic for a number of years. I think this mainly has to do with a more competitive environment. However, where google used to serve both our sites for a search term it now will only show one.
How much organic benefit should we see if we combine. Will it be significant enough to merge the two sites. Understandably, I realize the future can't be predicted but I would like to know if anyone has had a similar experience or opinion
Thanks
-
I think that there is a good chance for an increase of total sales by combining the sites. I vote for this because the two sites have diverse link profiles and combining them will make a big gain in the link diversity and domain authority of the site that remains. I would merge them with optimism rather than with fear.
-
Google doesn't tend to like 'clone' sites and if it detects them, one of the web properties will be nerfed. Google wants people to 'add value' to the web, and then reward them with traffic. The path is not supposed to be, build one site - clone it, get double the traffic. This is also to keep Google's search results diverse
Seriously, how annoying would it be if you searched for something and every link was the same site with a different name?
In situations where you gained extra traffic illegitimately, there's not much that you can do (technically or otherwise) to re-capture the traffic that you shouldn't have been getting in the first place.
If I were you, I'd be looking at this decision more in terms of: "this will help to plug a gap and stop further deterioration". If Google think you have been gaining traffic that you shouldn't have been getting, fixing the problem won't cause Google to give you 'bonus points' that see your site(s) return to illegitimate traffic levels
If you are looking for quick and easy ways to succeed in SEO, know that the lifespan of such techniques is limited. In actual fact, you're lucky not to have received a penalty on both sites.
This is not a case of "how can I make some quick traffic again", it's a case of "how can I demonstrate to Google that my behavior is changing, and avoid a penalty for my main site". Sometimes the benefit, is NOT losing everything you have!
Darin Pirkey made some good points, but I don't think it's a case of 'the benefits of moving outweigh the risks of leaving it'. My POV is very similar but slightly different. I think that 'the risks of leaving it as it is are greater than the risks of merging the web properties' (but then... I'm a bit of a cynic)
-
I think you are already seeing that Google is treating these two as the same. I've had this issue with a legal blog and a lawyers main website. We took the blog from it's own domain and put it under the main lawyer website. We did see a dip in traffic for about two months but it quickly recovered and we ended up with more traffic as the overall site seemed to be more authoritative under one roof.
During this merge, I would also check for "thin content" and/or content that is no longer relevant and/or getting traffic. We tend to use the opportunity as a sort of spring cleaning of the site. But, since your sites are pretty identical, a good thorough examination of all the content on both would be beneficial. Make sure you map the "old" site and keep a sitemap just in case something goes wrong. We used a Google Sheet/ Excel to map domains so in the event something went wrong with the the 301's, we had the opportunity to correct everything.
I know there are risks with moving the domain, but I think the positives outweigh them by a long shot.
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 a same paragraph appearing on two webpages of my site!
is it gonna affect rankings if so what should be done thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sam09schulz0 -
Penalized domain, starting over. 302 or just add a link that site has moved?
Hello, our .com domain got a fred update and to be honest we need to start over. Now my first idea was to 302 the domain as the penalty should not come with this. Other option is just to have a landing page saying, we have a new address its www.example.es . What would be better?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | advertisingtech1 -
SEO - Use pages on main site or set up outside keyword rich domains and websites
I have a client who is wanting to target searches for competitors products. His idea was to purchase domains related to the searches he's targeting (for example, people looking for another company's app) and to build out one page websites addressing the search query and why a customer would choose his app solution over a competitor. I know he'd have to build a handful of links to each site for any chance of success but I wanted to ask the following.. Would doing this be better than just building pages addressing the searches on his main website domain? Is there an SEO risk to doing this? Potential for a penalty? Anything we need to do to structure these in a way that won't violate Google's SEO guidelines? Any other thoughts on pros and cons of each strategy? Thank you! Ricky
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RickyShockley0 -
Domain Change Before or After Site Revamp?
In the last year traffic to our site has dropped in half and ranking has dropped significantly. Very little no content has been added in that time. We would now like to improve ranking by adding new content. 2 domains effectively exist for the site. The existing domain is www.nyc-officespace-leader.com. But www.metro-manhattan.com redirects to www.nyc-officespace-leader.com. Our company is Metro Manhattan Office Space, Inc.. We registered www.metro-manhattan.com and created the redirect to www.nyc-officespace-leader.com in 2012. www.nyc-officespace-leader.com was registered in 2006. Many links to the site show www.metro-manhattan.com and I believe this may be a source of confusion for Google. Would it be best to make the domain consistent at this time by redirecting it once and for all and to do so before adding new content? If this is done correctly can we avoid taking a hit on ranking? Note: -www.nyc-officespace-leader.com is the old domain.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
-www.metro-manhattan is the new domain but has existed since 2012 and has been redirecting to the old domain since then
-The company name is Metro Manhattan Office Space (similar in branding to the new domain) Am I correct in assuming that having the 2 domains may be causing issues with Google involving domain authority? Change the domain before adding content or add content before?0 -
I have rebuilt a website on a new domain and followed SEO protocol to maintain authority, but the results and rankings are declining.
We took over an account for a company called knightdoorservices.com who specialize in doors and windows in Edmonton, Alberta. We built them a new website on a new domain: knightdoorsandwindows.com. We did 301 redirects on all of the old URLs so that they now point to the new URLs so most of the authority should transfer over. Additionally, each page has a properly optimized title, h1 tag, a series of pertinent alt tags, and many instances of the focus keyword for that particular page. Additionally, the website loads quickly and has many high authority inbound links pointing to the domain. We have done this for many other companies and have seen their rankings maintain their position or increase. Is there something that I am missing for this company in particular? Thanks so much!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Web3Marketing870 -
Penguin recovery, no manual action. Are our EMD sites killing our brand site?
Hi guys, Our brand site (http://urban3d.net) has been seeing steady decline due to algorithm updates for the past two years. Our previous SEO company engaged in some black-hat link building which has hurt us very badly. We have recently re-launched the site, with better design, better content, and completed a disavow of hundreds of bad links. The site is technically indexed, but is still nowhere in the SERPs after months of work to recover it by our internal marketing team. The last SEO company also told us to build EMD sites for our core services, which we did: http://3dvisualisation.co.uk/ http://propertybrochure.com/ http://kitchencgi.com/ My question is - could these EMD sites now hurting us even further and stopping our main brand site from ranking? Our plan is to rescue our brand site, with a view to retiring these outlier sites. However, with no progress on the brand site, we can't afford to remove these site (which are ranking). It seems a bit chicken and egg. Any advice would be very much appreciated. Aidan, Urban 3D
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | aidancass0 -
Other domains hosted on same server showing up in SERP for 1st site's keywords
For the website in question, the first domain alphabetically on the shared hosting space, strange search results are appearing on the SERP for keywords associated with the site. Here is an example: A search for "unique company name" shows the results: www.uniquecompanyname.com as the top result. But on pages 2 and 3, we are getting results for the same content but for domains hosted on the same server. Here are some examples with the domain name replaced: UNIQUE DOMAIN NAME PAGE TITLE
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Motava
ftp.DOMAIN2.com/?action=news&id=63
META DESCRIPTION TEXT UNIQUE DOMAIN NAME PAGE TITLE 2
www.DOMAIN3.com/?action=news&id=120
META DESCRIPTION TEXT2 UNIQUE DOMAIN NAME PAGE TITLE 2
www.DOMAIN4.com/?action=news&id=120
META DESCRIPTION TEXT2 UNIQUE DOMAIN NAME PAGE TITLE 3
mail.DOMAIN5.com/?action=category&id=17
META DESCRIPTION TEXT3 ns5.DOMAIN6.com/?action=article&id=27 There are more but those are just some examples. These other domain names being listed are other customer domains on the same VPS shared server. When clicking the result the browser URL still shows the other customer domain name B but the content is usually the 404 page. The page title and meta description on that page is not displayed the same as on the SERP.As far as we can tell, this is the only domain this is occurring for.So far, no crawl errors detected in Webmaster Tools and moz crawl not completed yet.0 -
Outranking a crappy outdated site with domain age & keywords in URL.
I'm trying to outrank a website with the following: Website with #1 ranking for a search query with "City & Brand" Domain Authority - 2 Domain Age - 11 years & 9 months old Has both the City & brand in the URL name. The site is crap, outdated.. probably last designed in the 90's, old layouts, not a lot of content & NO keywords in the titles & descriptions on all pages. My site ranks 5th for the same keyword.. BEHIND 4 pages from the site described above. Domain Authority - 2 Domain Age - 4 years & 2 months old Has only the CITY in the URL. Brand new site design this past year, new content & individual keywords in the titles, descriptions on each page. My main question is.... do you think it would be be beneficial to buy a new domain name with the BRAND in the URL & CITY & 301 redirect my 4 year old domain to the new domain to pass along the authority it has gained. Will having the brand in the URL make much of a difference? Do you think that small step would even help to beat the crappy but old site out? Thanks for any help & suggestions on how to beat this old site or at least show up second.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DCochrane0