Competitor Ranking High has 2 Domains, But Duplicate Website ?
-
I was using OSE and noticed all the backlinks to one of our competitors is there other domain name, which is the EXACT SAME website. You can enter both url's and they display the same content. They are not useing any canonical tags either. Why are they not penalized for duplicate content? And for using there own website for backlinks ? We try to do everything right, but still cannot beat them.
Any thoughts on this?
-
Your competitors obviously knew what they were doing. This is what many would call Black Hat SEO, and while it can provide some good results in the short term, it's shady activity.
SEO should never be about gaming the SERPs. It should be about providing useful signals to search engines to tell them how to rank your pages.
Companies that do this type of stuff are only hurting themselves in the long run. I firmly believe if you continue to use solid white hat SEO techniques you'll come out on top of all of the gamers out there in the end.
Crime only pays until you get caught.
-
I can share a personal experience that might help clarify how the duplicate site issue works.
My site contains a sitemap which is automatically updated each day. When the new sitemap is created, Google and Bing are pinged. I also have a backup job scheduled to run daily. It is a perfectly standardized setup.
I wanted to do some testing with my site, so I restored my most recent backup to www.mydomain.com/test. The /test site was an exact duplicate of my domain. My lack of forethought was quite costly.
The /test site generated a sitemap, pinged the search engines, and was listed. In retrospect, I should have turned off the sitemap job and blocked the /test site in robots.txt. Worse, I didn't catch my error for over a month. While doing a search I noticed the result took me to the test site. After some troubleshooting I realized the error.
Bottom line, anyone can run two sites with identical information. The problem is that both sites will get listed. So if you have a 100 page site which is duplicated, then Site A might have pages 1 - 50 listed, and site B might have pages 51 - 100 listed. The problem is your domain authority is split between the two sites.
Ultimately the problem is fixed by 301'ing one site to the other. When that happens you will lose some link juice due to the 301.
Your competitor can rank well on both sites. But the same page wont rank well on both sites. Only one of the duplicated pages will appear in the SERP.
-
I believe that you are lucky that they run two websites. The reason... they have gotten backlinks into both of those domains instead of focusing ALL of their backlinks into a single domain. That divides their power instead of concentrating it.
So, I don't worry about competitors who think that they are going to build five websites in the same niche to kickass on me. Let them do it, divide their energy, divide their time and divide the backlinks.
I will start sweating when they redirect all of their satellite sites to the homesite.
-
Hey, the other site may well show up on a site:example.com query, but that does not mean it is ranking for key terms. Equally, it may seem that they are getting equity from the links, they may even be getting some, but I would suggest there is likely something else at play here.
It's practically impossible to give you a more definitive answer without the URL though. Happy to take a look if you want to private message it to me on here.
Marcus
-
Whoops. Actually they both appear in google that way but the cached domain is there main domain. Does that mean that it is parked?
-
Wait! But when I do site:example.com/ in google . both websites are still being picked up.
-
I would rather not. Private email possibly.
-
Your right. Actually Last year they both ranked, now I am only seeing there main website. But I still do not understand why if they were doing that, why were they not affected by that? I am bugged by this because it seems like they are receiving a lot of power from there backlinks which is there domain that is no longer ranking.
-
Can you provide the sites? It's pretty hard to tell without looking at them.
-
I used to have a few competitors who ran multiple identical sites - all linking to one another.
Today just one site remains. Duplicates are filtered from the SERPs.
My bet is that these competitors will have just one site in the SERPs by this time next year.
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
-
Out of Stock page ranking
When a competitive site is consistently ranking for a product that is never in stock, or in some cases, has been discontinued for several years and will never again be in stock, is there a way to communicate that information to Google?
Competitive Research | | ChristopherGlaeser0 -
Localized SERP Rankings - Multiple Questions...
The Google SERPs for my keywords are pretty regional. We are in the "IT Support Company" space. I've checked with friends in other parts of the country, and we don't show up in the SERPs in other parts of the country for KWs that we are ranking for locally. Questions: 1. I see both national and local players showing up in the SERPs. Is there any kind of formula for how Google decides who gets on the first page? 2. Some of my keywords trigger Google+ listings. How long does it take to show up in Google+, assuming we're optimized appropriately, and we have earned a placement? 3. For Moz's keyword ranking tool, how does it handle regional searches? Moz's tool is going to show different KW rankings than what I will see. My immediate concerns are rankings in my area (NY Metro), but we want to go national. How do we track rankings in different areas? 4. Is it possible to be on the 1st page with Google+ and Organic listings? 5. Do the Google+ 7 packs have generally better, or worse CTRs than similarly placed organic listings?
Competitive Research | | CsmBill0 -
Moz Rank Moz Trust and Authority higher than my competitor but still getting outranked
Hi There, I'm new to SeoMoz but ive been using it for the past month and I've been using the tools to try to optimize my site but for some reason even though my metrics are showing that my rank and authority are rising past my competitor they still rank higher in the searches. my website is the site on the far left with the domain authority @27. the competitor that keeps outranking me is the third from the left with a domain authority of 12. If anyone can advise as to why I'm being outranked that would be very helpful. I'm stumped here. Thanks guys! eYtMRr9.png
Competitive Research | | SamRaskin1 -
Keyword - Competition between competitors
So, I'm about 2-3 weeks into my subscription and see a renewal coming. I love the information I'm getting - but I really want to maximize my capabilities with these tools. Any article/blogs or forum post suggestions that I should read would be awesome, right now I'm still in that phase where i see lots of cool things - but have no idea to fully use them to really give me that even bigger boost. My First Question is - There are some keywords, that I climb and sometimes slip. But overall a competitor and i flip flop between 15-22 range for it. What would be a good way for me to really add that extra push to throw me down into the top ten and leave them in the dust?.. Also on the Keyword topic - There are a lot of keywords they probably rank for that I don't, what is the best way to go about identifying keywords they may targeting/have a good presence in that I'm not aware of. I do have a site that is on multiple newspapers, and .gov sites. Among other things... This has already proven to be very good for me. But I'm 99% sure I have a few/lot of leaks, that if they were plugged - We would see a lot of good things come from those results.
Competitive Research | | choiceenergy0 -
Website Neighborhood Tool
Hello,
Competitive Research | | Ric
Do you know a tool where you can find other websites with the same Adsense code or Analytics Code? Thanks, Eric0 -
I'v been trying to rank for this word for a long time
Hi, I have this one page designed to rank for a spesific word i google (sweden). The page has a flawless moz grade A on-page. While my competator ranks for their subdomain, also grade A. I rank 6 he ranks 2 in google. Would I be doing a misstake if i 301 directed it to mu subdomain. In visitor perspective it would be a better landig page aswell. I dont want to lose my rank though. Best practice, anyone?
Competitive Research | | SuperlativB1 -
Domain Authority Question
So in looking at my first campaign with 3 of my top competitors, I have a domain authority of 65, and my competitors are 31, 43, and 38 and yet all of them outrank me by quite a bit. How can I take this research and make some sense of it to beat them in rankings? Thanks!
Competitive Research | | azguy0 -
PA and PD better than my competitors is a way to rank better?
I got a site that stuck in last position of google's first page. My on-page is grade A for this particulary page, i got links for that page too. But My competitors PA and PD is better than mine, not too much, but it is. If i build more quality backlinks and start increasing my PA and PD probaly i will rank better than my competitors? Thats the factor that i have do cara abour now?
Competitive Research | | Ex20