Microsite and main website alternate in rankings
-
Hi all,
I just noticed a potential issue with our websites. We have two ecommerce websites, one is a very large one selling all sorts of products, while the microsite focuses on a small segment of products. All products sold on the microsite are also sold on the main website. In the beginning of September, we upgraded the microsite to the same script that the main website uses to make it mobile friendly and update the design. They now look very similar.
Before, both websites used to rank on page 1 for a specific keyword. I have noticed that since we upgraded the microsite, the two websites have been taking turns ranking for the keyword. For a few weeks the microsite ranks and the main website doesn't rank for the keyword. Then for a few weeks only the main website ranks and the microsite doesn't.
I think the reason this is happening is that Google understands that the content is the same and the websites are both owned by the same company. Fair enough.
-
I remember reading an article about this phenomenon before but can't remember where. Does anyone know which article I'm talking about (it would have been on an SEO blog/website, e.g. Moz, SEJ, SE Roundtable etc)? I'm not even sure what this phenomenon is called.
-
If we can only have one of the pages rank, we would prefer it to be the microsite at all times. Would a canonical tag on the main website referring to the URL on the microsite fix this?
-
I think at the moment the product descriptions are either very similar or identical. Would it help to make them more different to get both to rank again if that is what we wanted to do? In the end it is still the same product being sold by the same company - after Google has already sort of merged the two, would they "un-merge" them if the content was more different?
Thanks in advance!
-
-
Hi Dmitrii,
Thanks, yeah we have canonicals which are self-referencing for products, so I will need to find out if we are able to manually change it on one URL.
The content on both pages is identical, which isn't great for SEO, I know. We sell a lot of (15k+) products and have one person writing product descriptions so we aren't always able to make sure the content is unique (although we do write our own descriptions, not copying the ones provided by suppliers). For the websites as a whole, the product descriptions on the microsite (where we sell about 30 products) are probably all either identical or extremely similar to the main website, but all other content is unique and of course the main website has lots more content that is unique to it, so there is just a small overlap, but for the page in question, it is probably 99% duplicate.
Personally, I'd be happy if just the microsite ranked for the keyword, but will need to discuss internally whether we want to put in the extra effort of making all product descriptions unique on the microsite.
As for relevant links, I think the microsite should have more, as it generally performs much better for keywords related specifically to its niche (which is why I don't like that it's not ranking at all for this keyword just now).
Thanks again.
-
Howdy.
It seems to me that you have duplicate content issues. Do you guys have any canonicals at all? How close is the content from one website to another?
So, if you want both websites to rank for the same product, which seems a bit pointless to me, since you'll have to double up all the efforts, budgets etc, you would need to have unique content on both sites, unique descriptions, all meta tags etc.
If you want only one to rank, then yes, canonical will do it. Also the link mass will have a lot of effect. Basically, if your large site has let's say 100 times more links with relevant anchor texts and from relevant websites, it can still be ranking over the microsite.
Hope this helps
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 for replicated website system
I have a client who has 750 agents. They want to provide them all with a website on a subdomain (mysite.domain.com). The sites will all contain basically the same info, however, this info can be customized on each site by each rep. Most of these reps sell pretty much the same thing, so the customization wont be very dramatic. So the question is, how can we build this replicated website system and deliver SEO value to each site?
On-Page Optimization | | gotchamobi0 -
XML Sitemaps for Property Website
Hi all, I was hoping that someone might have a link to a good example of an XML Sitemap for a large property (real estate) website? Thanks in advance to anyone who does! 🙂 Gavin
On-Page Optimization | | IcanAgency0 -
Why will a Page not rank or improve on a website?
My website is performing well, but I have a couple of popular Brand pages that no matter what I do will not rank organically, they are being indexed, but will just not perform or improve. The rest of the pages throughout the website all seem to be fine, can anyone advise if they have experienced a similar problem or advise why this would happen or even suggest what I should do to fix the problem, we have even gone as far to create a new page and delete the old one, and it still hasn't worked. I have used various tools to test the page and variations of search terms and although it is appearing in Google it is not ranked, although it is ranking and visible in Yahoo and Bing. Any help and advise would be appreciated. Jacqui
On-Page Optimization | | EurekaSolutions0 -
How to rank Product pages over its Resource counterpart?
So, I have a resource page coming up in the SERPs above the product page, obviously both pages are targeting a lot of the same terms... it's like one is how to use the product and the other IS the product. What's your take on getting the money page to rank instead of the resource page? The only things I can think of include making sure that (internal) anchor text hyperlinks are all powering up the product page, and possibly adding more content to the product page and it's sub-pages. Possibly even including the how to use the product info on the product page itself. Any other ideas?
On-Page Optimization | | wiredseo0 -
Meta Geotag - two locations on one website
I have a client that I would like to do a Meta Geotag for. They have two locations. Am I able to do two meta geotags on their website? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | OOMDODigital0 -
Mobile website content
What is the point of optimizing (on-page SEO) a parallel mobile website if the mobile search results are taken from the general (desktop) index?
On-Page Optimization | | echo10 -
Main page link reduction
I am in the process of reducing the number of internal links from the homepage with the assumption that the more links I have the more "juice" goes to internal pages I have two options since many of the links are costumer service related 1. create one link that leads to a costumer service page and place all the links their. 2. get all those links on the main page as nofollow links. what are your opinions
On-Page Optimization | | ciznerguy0