Will multiple domains for the same local business hurt its rankings?
-
If I have a mold removal client who has domain1.com, which is several years old, and he creates a new domain2.com with the same info (reworded), but changes over the citations to domain2 will it
1. lower domain1.com's rankings?
2. make ranking either site harder since there are now 2 sites for the same thing?
3. reduce the ability for either site to gain a higher domain authority since links can now go to either
-
What is the purpose of the 2nd site?
The age of the domain a ranking factor, but one of many.
If he wants to change the domain your client can tell Google about a change of address in GWT and do a 301 redirect from the old site to the new site.
If the purpose is to have two sites ranking on the first page, a quicker and easier tactic would be to do some barnacle SEO (see http://moz.com/blog/barnacle-seo-whiteboard-friday) and get some of their citation / profile pages ranking on the 1st page for their mold related keywords.
With the recent updates and focus on quality it has become more difficult to try and operate multiple sub-niche sites, and will be much better to focus attention on creating one quality site which is seen as an authority.
-
Domain 1 had domain age, and the authority of the citation sites linking to it. Most likely Google had already crawled them, knew they existed, and will now have to recrawl and assign a new ranking. Be ready to wait a while.
This was very common at an SEO firm I used to work at, where they would create location or keyword-based domains in addition to the main branded domain in an effort to gain additional rank. They were frequently pummeled by the larger branded sites in rankings. Google targets these types of sites which have thin content, short term domain registrations, lack of citations/backlinks, etc etc.
If the site is hosted on the same ip address, in the same webmaster/analytics account AND has similar wording, I'm willing to bet Google will see them as similar and smack them both, or index the newer domain due to being seen as "fresher" content. Unless the time has been spent in giving both domains some love regarding citations and content I do not see this doing well in the SERP.
-
Websites compete against each other one page in the SERPs vs one page in the SERPs.
Let's imagine that you expand this idea... if two websites are better then ten websites should be awesome.
So you build ten websites, each with ten pages and put them out in the SERPs to compete. But your competitor puts those one hundred pages all on the same website.
Every time someone lands on that 100 page site they say.. "WOW this site has everything" and they tweet about it share it and link to it. That big site is going to become really popular.
You have ten websites and when people land on them they say... "meh... this site is OK but a am not tweentin' about it because that big site is a lot better":.
So, you can attack with ten slingshots or attack with one battleship, which one is going to defeat the competitor when you are fightin' one page in the SERPs vs one page in the SERPs?
All of my money is on the single big site with all of that awesome content.
The only time that I would consider making site #2 is when you have site #1 beating everybody everywhere. Then what it is going to do is push your competitor down in the SERPs, but really instead of starting that second site you should just be expanding the big site into new keywords.
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
-
Redirection of 100 domain to Main domain affects SEO?
Hi guys, An email software vendor managed by a different area of my company redirected 100 domains used for unsolicited email campaigns to my main domain. These domains are very likely to get blacklisted at some point. My SEO tool now is showing me all those domains as "linking" to my main site as do-follow links. The vendor states that this will not affect my main domain/website in any way. I'm highly concerned. I would appreciate your professional opinion about this. Thanks!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | anagentile0 -
Will modifying an existing CNAME record effect my Domain Authority
I'm switching my hosting over from AWS to google cloud, will changing the CNAME record to point to the google cloud server effect my Domain Authority score?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Moeealii0 -
Linking from & to in domains and sub-domains
What's the best optimised linking between sub-domains and domains? And every time we'll give website link at top with logo...do we need to link sub-domain also with all it's pages? If example.com is domain and example.com/blog is sub-domain or sub-folder... Do we need to link to example.com from /blog? Do we need to give /blog link in all pages of /blog? Is there any difference in connecting domains with sub-domains and sub-folders?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Is Building a Local Directory of Businesses on a Subdomain Good SEO?
Hello Fellow Moz'ers: I own a small digital shop in a major US city. We had a marketing idea which I'd like some input on the soundness of. We are creating a professional services directory of 'digital professional services providers' in our hometown. The directory's membership will only be open to firms located within our city limits. The directory will be curated and maintained, ongoing, by us. Our motivation is 75% selfish and 25% benevolent. The idea is that, by building the directory on our subdomain, we hopefully will collect links, which ultimately will enhance search visibility. But I'm concerned about the devaluation directories have incurred in recent years and I've even seen advice given to the effect that listings in some directories might be harmful to a site's link profile. It is not our intention to harm those who might list in our directory. Any thoughts on this matter would be greatly appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Daaveey0 -
Building a product clients will integrate into their sites: What is the best way to utilize my clients' unique domain names?
I'm designing a hosted product my clients will integrate into their websites, their end users would access it via my clients' customer-facing websites. It is a product my clients pay for which provides a service to their end users, who would have to login to my product via a link provided by my clients. Most clients would choose to incorporate this link prominently on their home page and site nav.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | emzeegee
All clients will be in the same vertical market, so their sites will be keyword rich and related to my site.
Many may even be .org and ,edus The way I see it, there are three main ways I could set this up within the product.
I want to know which is most beneficial, or if I'm missing anything. 1: They set up a subdomain at their domain that serves content from my domain product.theirdomain.com would render content from mydomain.com's database.
product.theirdomain.com could have footer and/or other no-follow links to mydomain.com with target keywords The risk I see here is having hundreds of sites with the same target keyword linking back to my domain.
This may be the worst option, as I'm not sure about if the nofollow will help, because I know Google considers this kind of link to be a link scheme: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en 2: They link to a subdomain on mydomain.com from their nav/site
Their nav would include an actual link to product.mydomain.com/theircompanyname
Each client would have a different "theircompanyname" link.
They would decide and/or create their link method (graphic, presence of alt tag, text, what text, etc).
I would have no control aside from requiring them to link to that url on my server. 3: They link to a subdirectory on mydomain.com from their nav/site
Their nav would include an actual link to mydomain.com/product/theircompanyname
Each client would have a different "theircompanyname" link.
They would decide and/or create their link method (graphic, presence of alt tag, text, what text, etc).
I would have no control aside from requiring them to link to that url on my server. In all scenarios, my marketing content would be set up around mydomain.com both as static content and a blog directory, all with SEO attractive url slugs. I'm leaning towards option 3, but would like input!0 -
Redirect non www. domain to WWW. domain for established website?
Hey guys, The website in question has been online for more than 5 years but there are still 2 versions of the website. Both versions are indexed by Google and of course, this will result in duplicate content. Is it necessary to redirect the non-www domain to the www. domain. What are the cons and advantages? Will a lot of organic traffic be lost at first (if non-www are getting a good amount of traffic)? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BruLee0 -
New Site: Use Aged Domain Name or Buy New Domain Name?
Hi,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | peterwhitewebdesign
I have the opportunity to build a new website and use a domain name that is older than 5 years or buy a new domain name. The aged domain name is a .net and includes a keyword.
The new domain would include the same keyword as well as the U.S. state abbreviation. Which one would you use and why? Thanks for your help!0 -
How to increase rankings?
I know to increase rankings involves link building, but what kind of link building is worth it and what type is not? At the moment most of my link building effort is focused on guest blogging, which has worked well for me, I have seen some good movement on a range of keywords using this tactic but I cant help but think I could get a lot more movement in the serp's if I mixed it up a little. A few other link building techniques I know of are below, but I don't really use them, so my question is what ones should I be using combined with my guest blogging to give my rankings that little extra help. 1. Directory Submissions 2. Article Submissions 3. Press Release Distribution 4. Forum Signatures 5. Blog Comments 6. Social bookmarking 7. Social Sites (Squidoo, Weebly, Wordpress, blogger) If I have missed something please let me know. Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | activitysuper0