Competitors have local "mirror" sites
-
I have noticed that some of my competitors have set up "mirror" homepages set up for different counties, towns, or suburbs. In one case the mirror homepages are virtually identical escept for the title and in the other case about half of the content id duplicate and the other half is different. both of these competors have excellent rankings and traffic. I am surprised about these results, does anyone care to comment about it and is this a grey hat technique that is likely to be penalized eventually.
thx
Diogenes
-
They both have massive numbers of backlinks and domains linking in. What do you think?
Looking at the NY site, it has a total of 2300 links from 46 domains. That is not a lot at all. One site wide footer link can offer 10k+ links from a single site. The focus should be on the number of linking domains which is 46 in this case.
When I review the links for this site in OSE, they seem quite natural. There are a couple legal directories but nothing unexpected. The anchor text varies nicely and the link profile is what I would expect to find. For OSE I usually apply the following filters: followed+301, only external, on this root domain, group by domain. Take a look for yourself and I think you will agree there doesn't seem to be anything unusual.
This NY site is not setting up "mirror" sites, but landing pages. Mirror sites are basically identical sites set up under different domains. Landing pages are pages within a site designed to welcome visitors who locate your site through specific search terms or marketing ads.
If this was my SEO client, I would advise them to increase the amount of unique content on their landing pages. I am not comfortable at all with these pages in their current form. With that said, Google apparently is comfortable with them and is indexing these pages.
The site's DA is 31, and PA around 30 for these pages. These sites are very easily beatable with proper SEO work. If I were in your position I would be very pleased to compete with these sites. No matter what site you build, you are going to have competition in SERPs.
What results are you concerned about? I presume you are searching for the exact phrases in their domain name? These types of sites usually do well in domain name match searches, but otherwise they don't fare well. If you offer a basic site with good content and solid SEO, you will solidly beat these types of sites every day.
-
Sorry I didn't make myself clear. These sites are not related but both use the same strategy. Look at the footer links. Incidentally I came accross another thread in this forum where another lawyer (coincidentally) was complaining that the more he optimized the lower his rankings. The answer was that he was creating a lot of duplicate content by trying to set up separate pages for each town and village. Maybe the 2 sites don't work because of the strategy but despite it. They both have massive numbers of backlinks and domains linking in. What do you think?
Paul
-
Thanks for the URLs Paul.
The two examples you offered are two unique websites. I looked at the IPs of both sites and they are completely different. The WhoIs site registration information is completely different. The web design of each site is completely different. The NY site is a wordpress website while the other site seems to be based off a basic site template. Without reviewing the content, there appear to be two completely unique websites.
When I look at the content provided on these pages, it is not duplicated at all. One site has a video, the other does not. They even have different addresses and phone numbers. Even under scrutiny these sites have the appearance they are completely unrelated. If these two sites represent the same company, they certainly did a good enough job of differentiating them to earn them both a place in the search indexes.
-
-
Hi Paul.
You mentioned that half of the content was duplicate, while half was unique. These pages may be unique enough to be considered as original pages. There are many factors involved and it is not possible to share much more in a generic Q&A without reviewing the sites.
To answer your question to Brian, a dynamic web page in this context is one where the content changes based on user information. For example, if you are connecting from Dallas, Texas then the web page would display the weather in Dallas, local news, etc. for that given area. If you then connected to the same site from Miami, Florida the weather and local news would be given for Miami. That would be one example of a dynamic web page.
In short, it is entirely possible to offer localized landing pages for specific areas in a white hat manner. It is of course also possible to do so using black hat techniques. Based on the 50% variance of content and the fact their performance is doing well, it sounds like they may be doing things in an acceptable manner. We need the URLs for the main and local sites to offer further insight.
-
Well, unfortunately I do not know what a dynamic landing page is, or how to tell. So, could you enlighten me and then we would be closer to the answer?
thx
diogenes
-
Are any of these dynamic landing pages?
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
-
Moving content form Non-performing site to performing site - wihtout 301 Redirection
I have 2 different websites: one have good amount of traffic and another have No Traffic at all. I have a website that has lots of valuable content But no traffic. And I want to move the content of non-performing site to performing site. (Don't want to redirect) My only concern is duplicate content. I was thinking of setting the pages to "noindex" on the original website and wait until they don't appear in Google's index. Then I'd move them over to the performing domain to be indexed again. So, I was wondering If it will create any copied content issue or not? What should i have to take care of when I am going to move content from one site to another?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | HuptechWebseo0 -
Does ID's in URL is good for SEO? Will SEO Submissions sites allow such urls submissions?
Example url: http://public.beta.travelyaari.com/vrl-travels-13555-online It's our sites beta URL, We are going to implement it for our site. After implementation, it will be live on travelyaari.com like this - "https://www.travelyaari.com/vrl-travels-13555-online". We have added the keywords etc in the URL "VRL Travels". But the problems is, there are multiple VRL travels available, so we made it unique with a unique id in URL - "13555". So that we can exactly get to know which VRL Travels and it is also a solution for url duplication. Also from users / SEO point of view, the url has readable texts/keywords - "vrl travels online". Can some Moz experts suggest me whether it will affect SEO performance in any manner? SEO Submissions sites will accept this URL? Meanwhile, I had tried submitting this URL to Reddit etc. It got accepted.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RobinJA0 -
My indexed site URL removed from google search without get any message or Manual Actions???
On Agust 2 or 3.. I'm not sure about the exact date...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | newwaves
The main URL of my website https://new-waves.net/ had been completely removed from Google search results! without getting any messages or Manual Actions on search console ?? but I'm still can find some of my site subpages in search results and on Google local maps results when I tried to check it on google
info:new-waves.net >> no results
site:new-waves.net >> only now I can see the main URL in results because I had submitted it again and again to google but it might be deleted again today or tomorrow as that happen before last few days
100% of all ranked keywords >> my site URL new-waves.net had been completely removed from all results! but I'm still can see it on maps on some results I never get any penalties to my site on Google search console. I noticed some drops on some keywords before that happens (in June and July) but it all of it was related to web design keywords for local Qatar, but all other keywords that related to SEO and digital marketing were not have any changes and been on top My site was ranked number 1 on google search results for "digital marketing qatar" and some other keywords, but the main URL had been removed from 100% of all search results. but you can still see it on the map only. I just tried to submit it again to Google and to index it through google search console tool but still not get any results, Recently, based on google console, I found some new links but I have no idea how it been added to links of my website:
essay-writing-hub.com - 9,710
tiverton-market.co.uk - 252
facianohaircare.com - 48
prothemes.biz - 44
worldone.pw - 2
slashdot.org - 1
onwebmarketing.com - 1 the problem is that all my high PR real links deleted from google console as well although it still have my site link and it could be recognized by MOZ and other sites! Can any one help to know what is the reason?? and how can I solve this issue without losing my previous ranked keywords? Can I submit a direct message to google support or customer service to know the reason or get help on this issue? Thanks & Regards0 -
Google suddenly stops ranking a page for a "keyword" with same "keyword" in title tag. Low competition.
Hi all, We have released our next version of product called like "software 11", which have thousands of searches every month. So we have just added this same keyword "software 11" as page title suffix to one of the top ranking pages. Obviously this is the page has been added suddenly with "software 11" at page title, multiple header tags and 1 mention in paragraph. Google ranked it for 2 days and suddenly stopped showing this page in entire results for the same keyword we optimised the page for. Why does it happened? Does Google think that we are overdoing with this page and ignoring it? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vtmoz0 -
How would you optimize a new site?
Hi guys, im here to ask based on your personal opinion. We know in order to rank in SEO for a site is to make authority contents that interest people. But what would you do to increase your ranking of your site or maybe a blog post? leaving your link on blogs comment seem dangerous, nowadays. Is social media the only way to go? Trying to get people to write about you? what else can be done?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | andzon0 -
Competitor frustration
I've tried to be completely "white hat" in my SEO efforts and my site ranks pretty well. However I'm being consistently beaten in the rankings by sites that pull every trick in the book and never seem to get penalised. One of my main competitors has 100s of near identical pages (just the town name different on each) and ranks close to or at the top for many searches, and has done for a couple of years now! Another uses massive keyword stuffing without any apparent adverse results. I don't want to follow their example, but my business is suffering as a result. Why can they get away with it and is there any way to "complain" to Google about it?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MagicianUK0 -
Is there a way to check if your site has a Google penalty?
Is there a way to find out if your site has an over optimization penalty?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RonMedlin0 -
Local Listing Spam - Why is Google Missing this?
I have a competitor that ranks in Google Search for a Top Dollar Keyword in the organic rankings with the normal result, however just below that it shows another result that contains the Local City Name followed by their business name. In the URL they have domain.com > Local and below the description data it shows a map for a totally different location as this competitor only has one location... Once clicking on the link I found that it has everything in the title, description and h1 and body content in footer that talks about the local area but not their product. and when you click the breadcrumbs you can go back to a directory of all the other cities and states they are targeting with doorway pages with the same layout however the anchor text is cityname+keyword How are they getting away with this?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Ben-HPB0