Clone sites at new company
-
I just came in house to our company for SEO. We have one main site and 182 that are exact duplicates and almost exact clones of the main site.
It's no surprise that half of these clones are deindexed already. The meta tags are just the domain name URL. I want to add unique text on the home page to each site, fix the meta tags and switch them up so they aren't clones.
Other than a huge rewrite of the code for each site, I'm not sure what else to do to prevent the rest from getting deindexed.
Is there any way to prevent the rest from getting deindexed?
-
What about turning them into regional sites? A has inventory located in this state, B inventory only in that state, etc. So they are not exact clones.
-
Hi CFSSEO,
I'm going through some older Q&A questions and wondering how this project is going for you. Is there anything more we can do to help you convince management that 182 clones aren't in their best interest?
-
If I inherited these sites and didn't have a boss to answer to I would deindex all of them but one intentionally.
I would then redirect them all to the main site.
"and so they want to get something out of them now."
ha... I would allow them to expire and use the savings to buy beer. Savings is what you will get out of them IMO.
-
CFSSEO
It sounds as if someone in the past thought having multiple sites would improve things. There is no point in even redirecting these.
1. Keep your main site.
2. If one or two of the clones happen to have any PA, DA - from different links than you have on main, you should redirect those pages to the same page on the main site. (Highly likely they do not)
3. On the other sites, take them down. Save money and time on hosting, etc.
4. Teach those in your company it must be about content, etc. and quality links and focus like crazy on the one.
5. On the chance someone would later question this, I would do a screenshot on every one possible showing the traffic to the site over the last 6 months in GA. (This is to protect you).6. When the main site increases in traffic, etc. Demand a raise!!
Best
-
The main site has inventory, the clone sites also have the same inventory listings. I believe the hope was that with more clone sites, the inventory will get more traffic and more sales OMG! Of course, that hasn't happened, but time and money went into these domains and so they want to get something out of them now.
The sites provide value to the people listing their stuff for sale, and to the user who finds items to buy. The sites do not actually have any backlinks but all link to the main site.
I think the best to hope for would be for these clone sites to just count as more backlinks to the main site because they are not ranking anywhere on their own.
-
The main site has inventory, the clone sites also have the same inventory listings. I believe the hope was that with more clone sites, the inventory will get more traffic and more sales OMG! Of course, that hasn't happened, but time and money went into these domains and so they want to get something out of them now.
I think the best to hope for would be for these clone sites to just count as more backlinks to the main site because they are not ranking anywhere on their own.
-
I've got the same thoughts as Aran.
What are these 182 sites for? Why do they exist? What are they meant to achieve?
If these sites are deindexed, do they have any value? Do these sites get any traffic? Does the mainsite get any traffic via these sites (and is this traffic worth anything - does any of this traffic convert?
Do these sites have any inbound links?
If these sites provide no value, no links, no business etc then I would seriously question why you need them.
The effort required to get these sites up and running and delivering some value is almost certainly going to be better spent on your main site.
-
To what end do you want to use the other sites for?
Surely, its easier to optimise one site than hundreds?
Will rewriting the other sites benefit you and if so will the benefits outweight the amount of work required, or could that effort be applied elsewhere to beefit the main site?
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
-
Recommended SEO Companies
Looking for advice here.... We are a small business looking to secure/increase rankings in the search engines. What are some recommended SEO agencies/companies that are effective with today's search engine optimization standards. _ Thank you_
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wickerparadise0 -
Adult Toys Sites
Does anyone know of any changes SEOwise when running an adult toy site versus a normal eCommerce site? Is there any tips or suggestions that are worth knowing to achieve rankings faster? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | the-gate-films0 -
How do I get more video reviews on a new site?
Hi, I'm working on a site that has video reviews of various places. It's general information/experience that most people possess and production-wise they are selfies. These videos are then transcribed and, voila... searchable content. My problem is this... how do I get large numbers of people to go to the trouble to make a 2 minute selfie? I thought about HARO, since one could work in a plug for something, but they have a site traffic threshold that this new site isn't at. Any and all ideas on how to efficiently generate this content for a new site with very little traffic would be appreciated. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Need help understanding "Clone sites"
I just read an article about Panda and it warned against against Clone sites: "Clone sites are a strong panda factor (JM, Mar 10, 2014)" I don't have any clone sites, but there are dozens of sites with imitations of mine. We were the first in the area of interest, and then all these other sites that imitated us popped up. None are exact replicas. But many have spun some of our articles and used them to create their sites; the site structures are not identical though. Google seems to know we are the original site on the topic since we are ranked #1 for most terms. Would these be considered clone sites in their eyes?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bizzer0 -
Traffic down after site migration
Hi! I've been working on a campaign for http://www.alwayshobbies.com/, which has seen a 35% in drop in traffic since changing ecommerce platforms. It's now been two months, but there is no sign of recovery. We are in the middle of cleaning up the link profile as part of a resubmission request, but that has been ongoing since before the migration. A lot of redirects were needed after 10k 404s appeared in Webmaster Tools after the new launch, but these have been reduced to around 500. We've been pretty thorough here, but I thought it would be worth checking in case there's something we've missed.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | neooptic0 -
Copying contents from a blog site (External) to a company blogsite (internal)
Hi, I have a client that has several external blogs www.blogsite1.info www.blogsite2.info and he also has the www.companywebsite.com the main domain of course is the comapnywebsite.com. They are doing some thing wrong, because instead of generating contents inside the main domain, the create contents in the blogsites and send links to the blogsites to see those contents. So they are inviting their users to EXIT the website... So, I told him, If you want to generate contents, please keep a blog INSIDE your domain www.companywebsite.com/blog, but keep the other ones, cause they are generating links (they are .info domains, that is not good, but they are nice keyword match domains) Now, he told me he was thinking on copy and paste the contents from the external blogsites to the internal website. I warned him about generating duplicate content. But.... is it really a problem? They are not in the same domain... Could google give a penalty because of that to the main domain? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | teconsite0 -
Removed Site-wide links
Hi there, I have recently removed quite a lot of site-wide links leaving the only link on homepage's of some websites, since doing this I have seen a dramatic drop on my keywords, going from position 2-3 to nowhere. Has anyone else experienced anything like this, should I expect to see a return on these keywords? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul780 -
A Site in Flash to Optimize
Hello, I have to understand if this site www.spacemilanmodels.com.pt can be optimize since the entire website is in flash wich is not good for optimizacion. What do you guys suggest? Recommendations? Is it possible only with link-building? Tks for the help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PedroM0