Referring domain issues
-
Our website (blahblah).org has 32 other domains pointing to it all from the same I.P address. These domains including the one in question, were all purchased by the website owner, who has inadvertently created duplicate content and on most of these domains. Some of these referring domains have 301's, some don't - but it appears they have all been de-indexed by Google.
I'm somewhat out of my depth here (most of what I've said above has come from an agency who said we should address this before being slapped by Google). However I need to explain to my line manage the actual issues in more detail and the repercussions - any anyone please offer advice please?
I'm happy to use the agency, or another - but would like some second opinions if possible?
-
Yesterday I discovered another 200 live domains, some which are a replica of the main site, most which redirect with a 301.
Should I take most of the domains offline - Google will surely think we're guilty of scraping the main website and creating spammy links to it?
-
Good answers here - did you get this taken care of? I'd say choose one domain and redirect or forward the others that have the same stuff. To explain it to my boss, I'd say.
- It confuses customers to have the same content on two domains. They might not know which company they're dealing with.
- You probably don't want half the traffic going to one site and half going to the other, especially if their content and user intent is similar. Every live domain is another analytics profiles I have to check on and watch for issues.
- Don't expect any ranking bonus from multiple domains, because when content is duplicate Google will just choose 1 page to rank.
- Maintaining multiple sites is more work than it's worth. We can get more done by focusing on our core domain unless there's a strong case for creating a new brand. (I wouldn't create a new site unless it was for a distinct brand).
Again, probably want to 301 redirect to the primary/canonical domain. If the domains have no links and no traffic (as I'd expect) forwarding through the registrar is fine, too.
-
Are you able to check the traffic through organic search on the other 2-3 sites that you're talking about? If traffic there is very high (which I doubt) than you would have to think carefully about this. Otherwise if traffic is very low than I would check if you could redirect that to the most important domain in the inventory.
-
What a good point: The website/domain owner could have simply purchased the domains, she didn't have to put them online.
Having researched the issue more I can see that she has two or more domains (different URL's), with exactly the same content. In other words 2,3 or more websites are almost exact replicas of each other, with links going to the 'mother' website. What should I do and what are the repercussions?
-
Do the other 31 domains need to be online? Otherwise I would say make sure that you redirect and de-index these domains as soon as possible yourself as they'll definitely can have an impact on the authority of the one that you would like to rank.
-
just to be sure - that all the domains "seem to be de-indexed" includes the one in question?
32 Redirects shouldn't be a problem. The domains with 301 couldn't be indexed - they are pointing to another location. Thats the same for 302, the question is the duplicate content. I have seen a lot of sites with duplicate content (means here really everything, content, style, etc.) and google just picked up one and indexed that one - not one other of the duplicates. One time it starts to de-index the indexed one and indexed another domain (thats another story) - I never saw 2 pages with the same content and style indexed at the same time in that case. The only problem should be, if you have duplicate content on a completly different site - different pages, different style, a.s.o. -> a "competitor" made by yourselfe. I never saw google de-indexing a site for that, but goggle ranked them lower and lower and lower.
If all pages are de-indexed I would guess there are more problems. If the one domain in question is still indexed, I would say thats how it should be.
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
-
How to build Domain Authority?
My site: https://www.fishingspots.com.au/ has started to drop Domain Authority in the past weeks, however less quality sites like http://silverstories.com.au/ are rising... I am not sure why? Is there someway I can understand why my site would suddenly start dropping authority?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | thinkLukeSEO0 -
Domain switch planned - new domain accessible - until the switch: redirect from new to old domain with 307?
Hi there, We are going to switch our local domain oldsite.at to newsite.com in November. As our IT department wants to use the newsite.com already for email traffic till then, the domain newsite.com has to be accessible for public and currently shows the default Apache page without useful content. The old domain has quite some trust, the new domain is a first time registered domain (not known by search engines yet and no published anyhow). The domain was parked till now. I am aware of the steps to take for the switch itself, but: **what to do with the newsite.com domain until everything is prepared for the switch? **I suppose users or search engines find the domain and as there is no useful information available it harms us already. My idea was to 307 redirect newsite.com to the oldsite.at but the concern is that this causes problems as soon as we switch the domain and redirecting with 301 from oldsite.at to newsite.com? Do you have any objections or other recommendations? Thank you a lot in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | comicron0 -
301 redirect subdirectory to new domain
I'm planning on using 301 redirects to spin out a subdirectory of my current website to be its own separate domain. For instance, I currently have a website www.website.com and my writers write tech news at www.website.com/news. Now I want to 301 redirect www.website.com/news to www.technews.com. Will this have any negative impact on SEO? What are some steps that I can take to minimize these impacts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chris_Bishop1 -
Domain Factors
Now that Page Rank seems to have been 'put out to graze' by Google with no further PR update planned, what would you say is the 'main factor' when looking at a domain? Is it Moz DA? or Moz Links? or Majestic TrustFlow? Or none of the above or is it a combination of the above?! Many thanks Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomKing0 -
Move webshop domain to the brand domain?
Hello, A client of mine has a brand with a website for over 10 years now.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Seeders
About 4 years ago the have opened a webshop on an other domain (like www.brandnamewebshop.com). At this moment the brand domain has a seomoz authority of 45.
The webshop domain authority is 25. The question:
Would it not be better to transfer the webshop to the brand domain because of the domain authority? If so, how can this be done the best way? With a 301?
I also think: what a loss of energy of building the authority on the other domain.
Is it an idea to use both domains for a webshop and rewrite the content? Or is there an other way to still make use of the built up domain authority? Would it really help the other domain when I make a 301 redirect (and make use of the pointing links to the webshop domain?). I hope somebody have some experience with this...
Looking forward to the possibilities! Gerjan0 -
Domain Links or SubDomain Links, which is better?
Hi, I only now found out that www.domain.com and www.domain.com/ are different. Most of my external links are directed to www.domain.com/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet
Which I understand is considered the subdomain and not the domain. Should I redirect? (and if so how?)
Should I post new links only to my domain?0 -
Improve Domain Trust
Hey there, I need to improve the Domain trust of my website. I've seen the blogitems of Rand but I still have questions. If I want to increase the Domain Trust..I "simpely" have to get links from websites with a high Domain Trust. This will eventually improve my Domain trust. But what are the effects if I do this by reciprocal linking. Does this eliminates the trust that comes from the other website.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PlusPort1 -
Pagination Issues
Hi, My press release section is showing pagination issues (duplicate pages) http://www.me-by-melia.com/press/ I know they are showing 27 duplicate page titles which would be a easy fix. Do you recommend pagination? Let me know if u see any other issues.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Melia0