Two domains / same Content
-
Hi MOZzers,
I have recently started working for a client who owns two domains (as recommended by their Web Development company), each omain is a complete duplication of the other. The only difference is one is a totally keyword focused domain name, the other is their brand name which also contains keyword. In a search for blocks of content the keyword focused domain comes up, the other doesn't and when I conducted a search for one of their primary services again the keyword focused domain name came up on the first page, but the branded search also appeared on the second. The web development company have been managing this company's Adwords account and promoting their brand name and up until today I was unaware of the other. Can I have some thoughts - do I ask the web developers to re-direct one to the other, or leave as it?
-
Hi Guys,
Thanks so much for the responses - I will speak to the client. They were totally unaware of the impact that this would have on them and they were in fact told they must do this (this was by one of the largest web dev. companies in NZ btw!)
-
PS. Just found that excellent HTaccess tutorial take a look at http://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/website/redirects/setting-up-a-301-permanent-redirect-via-htaccess
-
1st Don't rush into anything, You must decide the end goal and results you would like to achieve.
2nd Duplicate content is bad, although you may not get a penalty it is definitely a black mark.
3rd 301's are a good option like Aaron said, just bear in mind you will likely lose the position in the search engine for the old URL and you may not regain the position with the new domain. I would recommend using a url rewrite in the htaccess file otherwise you will end up with a generic 301 and a lot of links broken.
Let's say this is some of your old URLs:-
www.domain.com/blog/how-to-look-smart
Let's say your new site is www.newdomain.com (With the same content links etc), If you did a standard 301 it would divert to www.newdomain.com However the subsequent URL after the.com would be lost i.e. they would just end up on the homepage of www.newdomain.com not www.newdomain.com/product/shoes.
In your htaccess file you set up a rewrite so it would redirect to the new domain name without changing the URL structure like this www.domain.com/product/shoes Redirects to www.newdomain.com/product/shoes
-
100% agree with Aaron.
Another solution, if they're adamant on having both websites, is to create new content for one of the sites so they're not competing directly against each other and there's no duplicate content. It really depends on the size of the website and its services though, of course. But you could focus on the brand with the branded website, and treat the keyworded domain one as like a "supplier" of that brand.
-
I would 100% 301 one of the sites and clean this up right away. Your client could get done for a lot of different things from google seeing it as a network of sites to panda issues for sure.
I would look into the history and backend of both sites to insure there is no issues but in saying that sometimes doing the keyword focused domain name can make it harder for your when building links as anchor become harder.
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
-
Buying Domains with Keywords but no PA, no content
MOZ Community, I am trying to gauge both the potential upside and downside of buying a few (relatively long) URLs that encompass some new keywords that are surfacing in our industry and creating permanent redirects to our branded website. [This wasn't my idea!] These URLs haven't previously had any content or owners so their domain authority is low. Will Google still ding us for this behavior? I hope not but I worry that there might be some penalty for having a bunch of redirects pointing at our site. I have read that google will penalize you for buying content-rich sites with high DA and redirecting those URLs to your site but I am unclear about this other approach. It seems like a fairly mundane (and fruitless) play. I tried to explain that we won't reap any SEO rewards for owning these URLS (if there is no content) but that wasn't really heard. Thanks for any resources or information you can share! I would appreciate any resources.
Technical SEO | | ColleenHeadLight0 -
Domain Change
What is the average organic traffic loss one can expect after switching to a new domain? We went from .com to .org and are seeing 50% decline in organic traffic and 25% in Google news traffic. 301s were implemented from site.com/some-page to site.org/some-page and change site was completed in WMT. This traffic drop seems excessive...
Technical SEO | | SoulSurfer80 -
Domain Switch - With lost control of original domain.
Hey all, A client finally sold a domain name after being harassed to sell for many years, without talking to us about it first. They moved the site to a new domain, and the purchasing company took over the original domain. Then they called me, wondering why the site is no longer showing up in Google. I've done some initial research, and everything I find for advice assumes that you have control over the original domain. We don't. I'm hoping someone here has some creative advice, so we don't have to start from the beginning, and/or painfully update links we've acquired. My only thought was that the new company may be kind enough to post 301's for us if we provided them.... Any thoughts / advice / life rings will be greatly appreciated! 🙂
Technical SEO | | KBK0 -
Content on top-level-domain vs. content on subpage
Hello Seomoz community, I just built a new website, mainly for a single affiliate programm and it ranks really well at google. Unfortunately the merchant doesn’t like the name of my domain, that’s why I was thrown out of the affiliate program. So suppose the merchant is a computer monitor manufacturer and his name is “Digit”. The name of my domain is something like monitorsdigital.com at the moment. (It’s just an example, I don’t own this URL). The structure of my website is: 1 homepage with much content on it + a blog. The last 5 blog entries are displayed on the homepage. Because I got kicked out of the affiliate program I want to permanent redirect monitorsdigital.com to another domain. But what should the new website look like? I have two possibilities: Copy the whole monitorsdigital website to a new domain, called something like supermonitors.com. Integrate the monitorsdigital website into my existing website about different monitor manufacturers. E.g.: allmonitors.com/digit-monitors.html (that url is permitted by the merchant) What do you think is the better way? I just got the impression, that it seems to be a little easier to rank high with a top-level-domain (www.supermonitors.com) than with a subpage (www.allmonitors.com/digit-monitors.html). However the subpage can benefit from the domain authority, that was generated by other subpages. Thanks for your help and best regards MGMT
Technical SEO | | MGMT0 -
Should a 301 from a penalised domain to a new domain be removed?
A business traded on a domain let's say example.COM which was heavily penalised due to non-removable spammy back links. Their previous SEO advised them to set up on example.CO.UK but redirected example.COM to example.CO.UK. Example.CO.UK ranks very poorly, presumably due to being 'tarred with the same brush' i.e. attributed with the ills of example.COM. Will it do any good to remove the redirect or is example.CO.UK now doomed as well?
Technical SEO | | Ewan.Kennedy1 -
Home Page .index.htm and .com Duplicate Page Content/Title
I have been whittling away at the duplicate content on my clients' sites, thanks to SEOmoz's pro report, and have been getting push back from the account manager at register.com (the site was built here and the owner doesn't want to move it). He says these are the exact same page and he can't access one to redirect to the other. Any suggestions? The SEOmoz report says there is duplicate content on both these urls: Durango Mountain Biking | Durango Mountain Resort - Cascade Village http://www.cascadevillagehotel.com/index.htm Durango Mountain Biking | Durango Mountain Resort - Cascade Village http://www.cascadevillagehotel.com/ Your help is greatly appreciated! Sheryl
Technical SEO | | TOMMarketingLtd.0 -
Redirecting Domains
Hi Everybody, My clients owns a lot of domains related to his website. I redirected them to the website. So his website is: www.vallnord.com but if you type Vallnordski, vallnordsnow, etc etc they will go to the website, but they will not change the url and will keep vallnordski, vallnordsnow instead of going to vallnord.com Not very clear actually, so if you have 20 seconds to type them you will see it very clear. I was wondering if this was a good practice or it is better to actually redirect someone completely (If they type vallnordski.com take them to vallnord.com)? Is redirecting a good SEO practice? Regards, Guido.
Technical SEO | | SilbertAd0 -
Should I be redirecting a .gov.au domain to a .com/.com.au Marketing URL?
Hi everyone, First time post - what a great community! On a trial at the moment but will definitely be signing up to PRO. The situation I'm helping to promote an event in Australia (lets call it "myevent"). The event also goes by a nickname "myev" (which isn't searched as much as "myevent"). The event for the most part is promoted offline as www.myevent.com. As it currently stands (and appears to have been the case for a number of years), www.myevent.com and www.myevent.com.au 302 redirect to www.mylocation.gov.au/myev The event is pretty much number 1 for keywords around "my event" and "myev", despite little attention being paid to on page optimisation and issues around duplicate content which I intend to fix. The domain being indexed by Google is www.mylocation.gov.au/myev . Open site explorer stats Open Site explorer shows www.mylocation.gov.au/myev as having a strong domain authority, and hundreds of backlinks. www.myevent.com and www.myevent.com.au have domain authorities in the 20s and about 30-40 backlinks each. The conundrum I've had a chat with the IT guys running the site(s) and they mentioned they'll be switching the way the redirects work, so everything goes to www.myevent.com NOT the .gov.au URL. I've done a bit of reading on the forums and understand that 301s should be used in order to pass the juice/authority from the existing domain (in this case www.location.gov.au/mye). I understand not all of this will be passed. What I'm not sure about is which URL should be the final preferred destination. I may not have a choice - www.myevent.com has been the preferred URL for a long time - but want to know if this will affect the performance in search results if the .com.au isn't used as the final destination (even though we would be redirecting from it)? Any suggestions / ideas / help would be most appreciated. I hope this all makes sense - I'm relatively new to the whole SEO world! Best wishes and many thanks.
Technical SEO | | hergs0