I have 2 websites with the same content
-
Hello everyone, this is my first post here on SEOmoz and I have a questions that I cannot seem to figure out. So here is my scenario:
I have 2 websites that are identical. The only difference between the 2 websites is the domain name. This was done a while back for marketing purposes, however, I am no longer needing my 2nd website. What is the best way to get rid of this second website? I still have about 1 paying customer a day convert on this 2nd website and I do not want to loose them, however, I know that I am getting penalized by the search engines because of this duplicate content. Please let me know the best way of going about this.
PS: I have read about 301 redirects, canonicalizing URLs, and other methods but do not know which one to choose. Any help is greatly appreciated!
-
Hi threebiz,
First, welcome to the community! Look forward to seeing you around in the future
Since there is a small loss of "link juice" when you apply a 301 redirect, you should pay attention to which domain you choose to redirect and which you keep as the primary domain.
Your choice may be influenced by suitability for branding, but if there is no real branding advantage in using one or the other, then I would make sure that I redirect the site with the lesser Domain Authority to the one with the greater.
You can use Open Site Explorer to check Domain Authority (DA) for both domains. You can learn more about DA under Metrics, Link Counts and Data Points.
If for example, you have Site A with a DA of 30 and Site B with a DA of 20, then I would redirect Site B to Site A, since this allows you to maintain the full domain strength of the site with the greater prospect of ranking.
Hope that helps,
Sha
-
Awesome. Is there anything else anybody can think of that needs to be done? I just want to do this correctly. Thanks for the response
-
In Webmaster Tools, use the Change of Address function.
-
Michelleh speaks truth.
-
Okay great. Do I need to do anything with my Google Webmaster tools account to let them know that I am moving my website? Thanks again!
-
Choose one site. 301 re-direct all content from the site you want to remove to the new site.
Make sure to re-direct to each corresponding page (don't re-direct to all URLs to the home page).
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
-
ViewState and Duplicate Content
Our site keeps getting duplicated content flagged as an issue... however, the pages being grouped together have very little in common on-page. One area which does seem to recur across them is the ViewState. There's a minimum of 150 lines across the ones we've investigated. Could this be causing the reports?
Technical SEO | | RobLev0 -
We have 2 versions of URLs. we have the mobile and the desktop. is that a duplicate content?
Hi, Our website has two version of URLs. dektop: www.myexample.com and mobile www.myexample.com/m If you go to our site from a mobile device you will land on our mobile URL, if you go to our site from desktop computer you will land on a regular URL. Both urls have the same content. Is that considered duplicate? If yes, then what can I do to fix it? Also, both URLs are indexed by google. We have two separate XML sitemaps- one for desktop and one for mobile. Is that a good SEO practice?
Technical SEO | | Armen-SEO0 -
Is the content on my website is garbage?
I received a mail from google webmasters, that my website is having low quality content. Website - nowwhatmoments.com
Technical SEO | | Green.landon0 -
Does 404 hurts my website.?
Does 404 hurts my website.? My website reporting 404 crawl errors on pages that have never been part of the website. Site showing lot of 404 errors and all errors from Blog.We didn't create any pages .Automatically pages are created and showing 404 (Not Found) error response..Please any one help me to identify those issues.?
Technical SEO | | nlogix0 -
Businesses That Have 2 Trading Addresses
Hi, I have a quick question regarding Local SEO. We have a building company that operates from 2 addresses, about 70 miles apart. When we changed the address in the footer of our website to a different registered office the rankings for that local area bombed. What I would like to know is if there is a way I can properly mark up the site so that Google recognizes the same business works from 2 locations. Thanks
Technical SEO | | denismilton0 -
Https Duplicate Content
My previous host was using shared SSL, and my site was also working with https which I didn’t notice previously. Now I am moved to a new server, where I don’t have any SSL and my websites are not working with https version. Problem is that I have found Google have indexed one of my blog http://www.codefear.com with https version too. My blog traffic is continuously dropping I think due to these duplicate content. Now there are two results one with http version and another with https version. I searched over the internet and found 3 possible solutions. 1 No-Index https version
Technical SEO | | RaviAhuja
2 Use rel=canonical
3 Redirect https versions with 301 redirection Now I don’t know which solution is best for me as now https version is not working. One more thing I don’t know how to implement any of the solution. My blog is running on WordPress. Please help me to overcome from this problem, and after solving this duplicate issue, do I need Reconsideration request to Google. Thank you0 -
Page Content
Our site is a home to home moving listing portal. Consumers who wants to move his home fills a form so that moving companies can cote prices. We were generating listing page URL’s by using the title submitted by customer. Unfortunately we have understood by now that many customers have entered exactly same title for their listings which has caused us having hundreds of similar page title. We have corrected all the pages which had similar meta tag and duplicate page title tags. We have also inserted controls to our software to prevent generating duplicate page title tags or meta tags. But also the page content quality not very good because page content added by customer.(example: http://www.enakliyat.com.tr/detaylar/evden-eve--6001) What should I do. Please help me.
Technical SEO | | iskq0 -
Multi Language websites!
Hello, What is the best way for a website to have more languages? For example www.site.com is in english BUT the content will be translated in other 4 languages .es .it .fr .de . Should i buy 4 diferent domains www.site1.es www.site2.it etc... or create folders like site.com/es/ site.com/it etc OR create subdomains es.site.com Few months ago i was 100% sure..to go and buy diferent domains then to create diferent content on that languages..but now..i am not so sure. Thank you very much for your help!
Technical SEO | | willyg0