Creating two websites from one and building up traffic to the new domain quickly
-
A client has an existing successful website that sells niche products - they are well known in their marketplace. They have two sets of key customers, let's call them (a) and (b), that need addressing in different ways to maximise sales. (a) is the more specialist end of the market, where people have complex needs - there are fewer of them but repeat business is likely, and we can talk to them in more technical language. (b) is the layman's end of the market - there is a vast pool of potential customers but they'll be more casual buyers and need to be addressed more in layman's terms.
So what they want to do is to take their existing website, and essentially split it into two different websites, one for each market. The one that will use the existing domain, with all the links that have built up over the years pointing to it, will be the site for the more specialist end of the market (a). The domain name suits it better, which is why he wants to use the existing domain with that site and not the other.
(b) will be a brand new domain. The client will write new product descriptions across the board so that the two sets of product information are not duplicate.
I'd rather he didn't do this at all, because of the risk involved, and the difficulty of building up the traffic to the new site, which is after all the one with the best chance of mass market sales. But given that the client has decided that this is definitely what he wants, does anyone have any thoughts on what the action plan should be?
-
Again, the thing is that the client has made the decision and he definitely wants to do this. I'm not planning to fight it any further as I've already explained to him the difficulties and he appreciates them and has made the decision to do it anyway.
The new site won't be exactly the same, but it will have broadly the same set of products, albeit described in a very different way.
The situation is undoubtedly difficult and undesirable, that's for sure. But the client has made a business decision and now we have to find the best way through it.
-
Sorry where you said 'splitting' the site in two, I assumed part of the site would move out to the new domain and therefore would no longer reside on the old domain
If it's going to be exactly the same site on both domains, then it truly is un-wise as there's no value-add for the web or end users (why go to the new site, when users can get all the same stuff on the old site?)
If it's going to be basically the same then it probably won't perform very well (also as the goal-posts for a good, linkable site have probably shifted since the old one was made!)
Different wording will help a bit but I wouldn't expect to see much performance on the new site, if it's not bringing a value proposition to the table (wording will only take you so far)
This is a good video from Google: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AmRg3p79pM
You only really need to listen to point #1. If you start working on the SEO before you work on the unique value proposition of the new brand (or at least, new site - if it will be branded the same) then it's pretty much pointless to continue
-
I appreciate the time you've put in to such a detailed reply, however I'm not questioning the client's business decision and I don't plan to. My question was not whether it is a good idea or not - that really doesn't matter as the decision is already made - but more to start a discussion around the best action plan from this point forward.
There won't actually be any redirecting involved, because what the plan is essentially is to make a new website with all the same products on as the original site, but worded completely differently for the wider market. The existing website will stay in place as-is, with the original domain and all the original content.
-
Yes there is risk involved. But the greater risk is when you never diversify and build out, you get left behind. What's worse, a high probability of a small to medium dip in results (short term, 2-3 months) or the certainty of site death via refusing to evolve over time (probably in 5 years)?
What he is doing, is making a business decision. You can't make or unmake, or take responsibility for his business decision (that burden is his and his alone). What you can do is help to inform his decision
Even when redirect mapping is done perfectly, you can experience dips in traffic. This is especially true when new domains come into play!
Things that can affect the 301 redirects ability to transfer maximum (100%) SEO authority:
-
- If the redirects end up looping (super unlikely, between two different domains. Happens more when architecture changes on the same domain and someone super smart isn't doing the redirects!)
-
- Wrong redirect type used (e.g: JS redirects, Meta refreshes, 302 redirects etc)
-
- If the redirects begin to chain (301 to a 301, 301 to a 302, 302 to a 301 etc.)
-
- If the content Google saw on its last 'active' cache of the old URL (which is now redirecting), is vastly different from the content of the redirect destination URL. Do not think in human terms, think in machine terms. Think about stuff like Boolean string similarity. If you take all the content from the old URL and put it in a single string, and do the same for the new page - if the Boolean string similarity is only (example) 25% (rather than 75%, or 90%) - then don't expect most of the SEO authority to go across (it won't). If the new page is significantly different, it's Google's view that the backlinks which webmasters created previously (to the old URL) shouldn't necessarily be applied (in terms of PageRank) to the new URL. They might not have decided to link to the new URL, if it's very different (fair play I guess)
So as you can see, even if you do everything perfectly, there's still a risk that some performance could be lost and could have to be re-built. So why do anything or ever split / build sites out?
Well, the human population grows every day right? So does the population of the internet. That means that keywords which are long-tail today, could be heavy-hitters in 2-5 years time. That will draw the attention of larger SEO agencies and companies with more resources (people, money, expertise) than you can hope to match. Those keywords will get sucked up into the sky
So what will you replace them with? Happily, keywords with 0 search volume today (or which aren't even recorded) will exist and become fruitful as the human (and web) population grows and the diversity of applied language (for searches and queries) increases in complexity over time
So if you never build out and split out, never divide and offer a more long-tail experience - you will die and be forgotten. All your keywords now, will be taken from you - with nothing to replace them with, your site will die out
So you **HAVE **to grow and divide and scale. It's not optional, it's a survival requirement on a Darwinistic web
But you are right there is risk, especially in the short to medium term. There will be some pain and a loss of results. But if that stops the site from completely dying out, it's something you have to do
Judging when that moment has come can only be the business owners decision
Think of a lion on the African savanna. Is it risky to go out there, take down an antelope or a bison? You bet your ass it is, as a predator the lion could lose an eye. But does the lion just say "fudge it then I'll just stay in"? No, because if he takes that line of thought he's sure to starve. I mean, in reality the lionesses do all the hunting anyway >_> but you get what I mean right?
This split out will probably negatively impact results, and these kinds of maneuvers need to be kept in check. Once move like this every 2-3 years should not be exceeded. But if you never do these things, you lose everything in the long run!
Hope that makes sense
-
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
-
Can you create town focused landing pages for a website without breaking Google guidelines?
I recently watched a webmaster video that said that town focused landing pages are seen as doorway pages if they only exist to capture search traffic. And then I read that just because you can sell your product/service in a certain area, doesn't mean you can have a page for it on your website. Is it possible to create town focused landing pages for a website without breaking Google guidelines?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Silkstream1 -
Domain switch planned - new domain accessible - until the switch: redirect from new to old domain with 307?
Hi there, We are going to switch our local domain oldsite.at to newsite.com in November. As our IT department wants to use the newsite.com already for email traffic till then, the domain newsite.com has to be accessible for public and currently shows the default Apache page without useful content. The old domain has quite some trust, the new domain is a first time registered domain (not known by search engines yet and no published anyhow). The domain was parked till now. I am aware of the steps to take for the switch itself, but: **what to do with the newsite.com domain until everything is prepared for the switch? **I suppose users or search engines find the domain and as there is no useful information available it harms us already. My idea was to 307 redirect newsite.com to the oldsite.at but the concern is that this causes problems as soon as we switch the domain and redirecting with 301 from oldsite.at to newsite.com? Do you have any objections or other recommendations? Thank you a lot in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | comicron0 -
Site re-design, full site domain A/B test, will we drop in rankings while leaking traffic
We are re-launching a client site that does very well in Google. The new site is on a www2 domain which we are going to send a controlled amount of traffic to, 10%, 25%, 50%, 75% to 100% over a 5 week period. This will lead to a reduction in traffic to the original domain. As I don't want to launch a competing domain the www2 site will not be indexed until 100% is reached. If Google sees the traffic numbers reducing over this period will we drop? This is the only part I am unsure of as the urls and site structure are the same apart from some new lower level pages which we will introduce in a controlled manner later? Any thoughts or experience of this type of re-launch would be much appreciated. Thanks Pete
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | leshonk0 -
New domain purchase 301 and 404 issues. Please help!
We recently purchased www.carwow.com and 301 redirected the site to www.carwow.co.uk (our main domain). The problem is that carwow.com had URLs indexed like www.carwow.com/a-b-c the 301 sends them to carwow.co.uk/a-b-c which obviously doesn't exist so is a 404! What should be done in this situation? Should it be ignored and not re-directed at all, or is there a way to delete/disavow these dead pages? An SEO has advised we redirect all pages to the homepage, but won't that mess up the link profile? Any advice would be great!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JamesPursey0 -
When migrating website platforms but keeping the domain name how best do we add the new site to google webmaster tools? Best redirect practices?
We are moving from BigCommerce to Shopify but maintaining our domain name and need to make sure that all links redirect to their corresponding links. We understand the nature of 301s and are fine with that, but when it comes to adding the site to google webmaster tools, not losing link juice and the change of address tool we are kind of lost. Any advice would be most welcome. Thank you so much in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WNL0 -
New Website - Un-natural link warning with 2 weeks of going live
I have a customer who has a website, 8 years old. The business has changed, and he has launched a new website (and sub-business_ to handle a particular service. As such the main website will no longer be handling the new service. For purpose of example; The service in question had it's own are set aside on his website, so what we have done is to 301 that part of the site (a single URL) to the homepage of his new website. Old Business Site
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | makeusawebsite
Service 1
Services 2 (301 to new site)
Service 3 New Business Site This worked well, and within a week his new site was gaining traffic for the service keyword. However, we have now had a un-natural link wartning in webmaster tools. The old page on the old site had minimal links to it (around 400). It had a page authority of 42, and 142 linking domains. The new website has been live a few weeks now, and has had 3 links to it, all genuine. He was on page one for the new business name, and is now page 6. Has anyone else ever seen this happen, and how should we deal with it. We could of course remove the 301 redirect and put in a recon-request, but the 301 seems like thje right thing to have done, and is genuine. Any advice greatly appreciated.0 -
Two Pics, one bit of Text single anchor link?
Hi thereGurus, sorry Aspirants ;-), I have a really nice looking menu used in my standard page template that has some SEO issues now due to possibly causing 'too many onsite links' penalty/downgrade on some of my bigger pages going >120 links. Wanting to keep the nice menu, I want to work around the issues if possible. The menu is comprised of 7 buttons with various keywords pertinent to the site. On the menu, hovering over the keyword in a button eg 'Technology' causes this button with word inside to do an animated slide down and a picture representative of 'Technology' to appear where the button was with the original button directly below it, which then a side menu slides out of to the right to reveal 5 anchor links that represent the 'Technology' menu category. The first option in this sub-menu is supposed to have the same anchor link as the description image and the button/button text that being it is like a category description. Trouble I am having is that the slide out menu requires a separate div for javascript reasons. I have one anchor covering the button and the pop-up image, but then I need a second anchor for the first line of the slide out menu (otherwise fails W3C). This is adding 7 duplicate anchors to the page on a e-Commerce page that already has too many anchors IMHO. I read in HTML5 you can have an anchor holding a div inside, but how about an un'd div? The next four items on the slide out menu go to other anchor links so it first anchor needs to end prior to these, hence halfway through a div. Is there another way of making multiple items (across div boundaries etc) only go to/count as one single anchor link? Thanks for your help, Brad
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BM70 -
Multiple stores & domains vs. One unified store (SEO pros / cons for E-Commerce)
Our company runs a number of individual online shops, specialised in particular products but all in the same genre of goods overall, with a specific and relevant domain name for each shop. At the moment the sites are separate, and not interlinked, i.e. Completely separate brands. An analogy could be something like clothing accessories (we are not in the clothing business): scarves.com, and silkties.com (our field is more niche than this) We are about to launch a related site, (e.g. handbags.com), in the same field again but without precisely overlapping products. We will produce this site on a newer, more flexible e-commerce platform, so now is a good time to consider whether we want to place all our sites together with one e-commerce system on the backend. Essentially, we need to know what the pros and cons would be of the various options facing us and how the SEO ranking is affected by the three possibilities. Option 1: continue with separate sites each with its own domains. Option 2: have multiple sites, each on their own domain, but on the same ecommerce system and visible linked together for the customer (with unified checkout) – on the top of each site could be a menu bar linking to each site: [Scarves.com] – [SilkTies.com] – [Handbags.com] The main question here is whether the multiple domains are mutually beneficial, particularly considerding how close to target keywords the individual domains are. If mutually benefitial, how does it compare to option 3: Option 3: Having recently acquired a domain name (e.g. accessories.com) which would cover the whole category together, we are presented with a third option: making one site selling all of these products in different categories. Our main concern here would be losing the ability to specifically target marketing, and losing the benefit of the domains with the key words in for what people are more likely to be searching for (e.g. 'silk tie') rather than 'accessories.' Is it worth taking the hit on losing these specific targeted domain names for the advantage of increased combined inbound links?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Colage0