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
-
SEO Content Audits Questions (Removing pages from website, extracting data, organizing data).
Hi everyone! I have a few questions - we are running an SEO content audit on our entire website and I am wondering the best FREE way to extract a list of all indexed pages. Would I need to use a mix of Google Analytics, Webmaster Tools, AND our XML sitemap or could I just use Webmaster Tools to pull the full list? Just want to make sure I am not missing anything. As well, once the data is pulled and organized (helpful to know the best way to pull detailed info about the pages as well!) I am wondering if it would be a best practice to sort by high trafficked pages in order to rank them for prioritization (ie: pages with most visits will be edited and optimized first). Lastly, I am wondering what constitutes a 'removable' page. For example, when it is appropriate to fully remove a page from our website? I understand that it is best, if you need to remove a page, to redirect the person to another similar page OR the homepage. Is this the best practice? Thank you for the help! If you say it is best to organize by trafficked pages first in order to optimize them - I am wondering if it would be an easier process to use MOZ tools like Keyword Explorer, Page Optimization, and Page Authority to rank pages and find ways to optimize them for best top relevant keywords. Let me know if this option makes MORE sense than going through the entire data extraction process.
Technical SEO | | PowerhouseMarketing0 -
Duplicate content and rel canonicals?
Hi. I have a question relating to 2 sites that I manage with regards to duplicate content. These are 2 separate companies but the content is off a data base from the one(in other words the same). In terms of the rel canonical, how would we do this so that google does not penalise either site but can also have the content to crawl for both or is this just a dream?
Technical SEO | | ProsperoDigital0 -
Database driven content producing false duplicate content errors
How do I stop the Moz crawler from creating false duplicate content errors. I have yet to submit my website to google crawler because I am waiting to fix all my site optimization issues. Example: contactus.aspx?propid=200, contactus.aspx?propid=201.... these are the same pages but with some old url parameters stuck on them. How do I get Moz and Google not to consider these duplicates. I have looked at http://moz.com/learn/seo/duplicate-content with respect to Rel="canonical" and I think I am just confused. Nick
Technical SEO | | nickcargill0 -
Adding content into an iframe
I want to buy an app/program that will help me create unique content but the content will be inserted to the page via an iframe. I have heard that iframes are problematic. I know that there will not be a lot of indexable content from this but I think that it will make people want to link to me. I would like to hear from someone's experience if I should go ahead or not.
Technical SEO | | JillB20130 -
Duplicate content vs. less content
Hi, I run a site that is currently doing very well in google for the terms that we want. We are 1,2 or 3 for our 4 targeted terms, but havent been able to jump to number one in two categories that I would really like to. In looking at our site, I didn't realize we have a TON of duplicate content as seen by SEO moz and I guess google. It appears to be coming from our forum, we use drupal. RIght now we have over 4500 pages of duplicate content. Here is my question: How much is this hurting us as we are ranking high. Is it better to kill the forum (which is more community service than business) and have a very tight site SEO-wise, or leave the forum even with the duplicate content. Thanks for your help. Erik
Technical SEO | | SurfingNosara0 -
New Website and Domain Question
Hi all, I am launching a new website around the end of October and I have purchased a great domain to use for it. My question is should I put some kind of holding page up to try and start building up some domain authority in preperation for launch? Or maybe a blog at www.domain.com/blog and then keep all the blog content at the same location when the full site goes up? Or is it best to wait and just launch the site when the first version is complete? Thanks, Ben
Technical SEO | | BenInder0 -
Does running 2 domains from the same website harm my seo efforts?
Hi I run a website which has 2 domains running from it. One domain has a .co.uk extension and shows products aimed at the UK market. The other domain is a .com which shows products aimed at the US market. As both domains run from the same website, the content is mostly identical APART from the product listings as they change depending upon whether you're in the UK or US. My reason for doing is this mainly for paid search purposes as I can have a more accurate domain depending upon which country I target. Both sites are set to encourage the bots to index it, and in google WMT each domain is targeted to its specific country. So, my questions are, Is this set-up possibly damaging my SEO efforts for either or both websites? If so, would setting one domain to no-index, improve SEO efforts for the other? Thanks in advance for any replies! Cheers Joe
Technical SEO | | joeprice0 -
Internal website search
Hi, I'd like to index dynamically generated - internal website search pages - to Google. A mod rewrite to make the URL strings friendlier might be one way, but as these pages are created on the fly and effectively don't exist till the search keywords are inputted, is it even possible to index them? thanks
Technical SEO | | richcowley0