Two company websites - should 1 be nofollow?
-
We are an automotive dealership that is required to keep a manufacturer appointed website. It's pretty terrible so we are having a new site developed in addition to that. We plan on transferring our current domain name to the new site but I am not sure what to do with the older, less useful site. Should I try to have both sites appear in the search results to capture more traffic? Or is that inefficient? Should I make the new site no follow?
-
Alan is right. I'll only add that you'll really want to look through the links he provided. Local SEO is a related, but very different animal than regular SEO.
Also, unless I missed an important detail, you may want to look into canonicalizing the manufacturer's site to your own site, assuming you don't care whether the manufacturer's site appears in the SERPS.
-
Ah well don't you just love terms and conditions?
I'm going to offer my own opinion here - others may see things differently...
If you are allowed to maintain a 2nd site, then that is what I would definitely recommend doing - focusing all your attention on the new site. Not doing any no-follow or blocking for search engines.
Why? Because as much as you may get traffic to the MFR linked site, and having a link from the MFR IS a good thing, without the ability to present the image, the message or the experience you want to convey, you're at the mercy of their marketing ability. And as you've described, the low volume of traffic you currently get seems to indicate a not-so-savvy ability.
Here's the difficulty though - you're essentially starting from scratch with the new site. So you're going to need to pull out all the stops.
High quality unique content is vital, of course. Local optimization on-site, backed by maximized off-site local SEO, social media and link-building are going to be what make the long-term difference though. If done properly, you should see your preferred site show up consistently in location based search results.
And then if the MFR site happens to show up, so be it. Unfortunate to need to deal with, yet a necessary evil in this case. More important is to push the site you control so you can have as much control over your message as possible.
Here's a few resources for local optimization
-
Hi Alan, thanks for the reply.
The manufacturer appointed website is one that we are required to maintain. We have very minimal control over look, feel, and content but we have enough control to customize it a bit (including access to the of the code).
The existing site will get assigned a new domain name of our choosing. We are not required to use a domain that the manufacturer chooses.
We are not required to use the manufacturer site as our primary site; however, the manufacturer will only link to the site that they provide from their parent site. This will be the sole reason we even care about that site. We literally don't have to do any maintenance whatsoever to the manufacturer site in order to keep it running. Fortunately, we don't get too much traffic from them so all of our marketing channels will direct people to the newer site.
-
I'm not sure what you mean by "a manufacturer appointed website". Does this mean you have no choice but to maintain a site they provide and where you have no control over it's look, feel, or content?
If you are planning on setting up a new domain and transferring your current domain name to that, what domain name would the existing site have? A 2nd newly obtained domain name? Or one available through the MFR?
Are you required by the MFR to use their provided site as your primary forward-facing promotional point of contact on the web?
These are all important points to help determine how you proceed.
If you make the new site nofollow, what would you use the new site for?
Having the need to maintain / promote two separate sites is always more challenging than focusing all your efforts on one site and really should be avoided at all costs if possible.
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
-
Should we Nofollow Social Links?
I've been asked the question of whether if we should nofollow all of our social links, would this be a wise thing to do? I'm not exactly getting a clear answer from search results and thought you guys would be best to ask 🙂 Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | JH_OffLimits0 -
Multiregional SEO - different website designs
Hello, when it comes to location & language targeting, is it possible to have different website page designs for their respective regions? So let's say we have one design for www.example.com/product-1 and a completely different design for www.example.com/us/product-1? Our branding is different for the US so would ideally like to use specific US designs for US pages. Thanks,
Technical SEO | | SEOCT0 -
Duplicate content on charity website
Hi Mozers, We are working on a website for a UK charity – they are a hospice and have two distinct brands, one for their adult services and another for their children’s services. They currently have two different websites which have a large number of pages that contain identical text. We spoke with them and agreed that it would be better to combine the websites under one URL – that way a number of the duplicate pages could be reduced as they are relevant to both brands. What seamed like a good idea initially is beginning to not look so good now. We had planned to use CSS to load different style sheets for each brand – depending on the referring URL (adult / Child) the page would display the appropriate branding. This will will work well up to a point. What we can’t work out is how to style the page if it is the initial landing page – the brands are quite different and we need to get this right. It is not such an issue for the management type pages (board of trustees etc) as they govern both identities. The issue is the donation, fundraising pages – they need to be found, and we are concerned that users will be confused if one of those pages is the initial landing page and they are served the wrong brand. We have thought of making one page the main page and using rel canonical on the other one, but that will affect its ability to be found in the search engines. Really not sure what the best way to move forward would be, any suggestions / guidance would be much appreciated. Thanks Fraser .
Technical SEO | | fraserhannah0 -
How to Handle Website Merge?
We are a law firm and have another law firm merging into ours. Our branding will remain the same, but I am trying to figure out how to best handle their website transition. Should we link it to ours (although their PR & page authority are not significant) or should I map each page to ours with similar content with a redirect? MY main concerns are not damaging our website's SEO by doing something search engine's would frown on and also to try to take advantage of any organic traffic or referral traffic. Or maybe some combination - link homepage with added verbage that attorney is now with our firm and a link and redirect the sub-pages? I look forward to thoughts from anyone who might have experience with this type to issue. Thanks in advance! JulieHow t
Technical SEO | | JulieALS0 -
SEO impact classifieds website
Hi, I'm part of an organization running a classifieds platform in Spain. (Mercadonline.es) We are hit by Google penalties since a few weeks, possibly caused by numerous errors we are experiencing. Most frequent errors are 404's and duplicate content (titles tags etc) since the nature of our website is dynamic. Many ads change daily, are added or removed, causing Googlebots (and others) to flag us and not being able to see our more unique content. Until what part of our platform should we be indexed? Since we have +34,000 pages indexed (mostly due to internal filter pages) I would need a systematic solution for us to display relevant and unique content, with enough usage of keywords that can bring us back up - we are actually ranked <50 on google for most of our main keywords. It is costing us precious time and money since we can only aquire our visitors (adwords etc) and not being to attract any organically. I can go in more detail with someone who can give me a bit more direction. Your answer is much appreciated! Ivor
Technical SEO | | ivordg0 -
Website redirects
We consolidated websites. All the international sites have been brought under the roof of our mothership site based in the US: www.crisisprevention.com ... We mapped out all of the URLs and where they should be redirected. However, if someone types in, say, www.crisisprevention.co.uk it redirects to the mothership site, BUT the old URL hangs around no matter what page you navigate to. I feel like it has duplicate content ramifications or worse. I would like opinions on this, so I can take my findings to IT and figure out a solution. Here’s another example: http://www.positive-options.co.uk and another http://www.positive-options.com
Technical SEO | | spackle0 -
How to SEO a Website Built off Godaddy?
I have a client whose website is built off Godaddy services. I know Godaddy is not the right choice for building a website, but what's done is done. The client has already bought the Godaddy services and there's no way I can tell him to go rebuild his website before we could optimize it for SEO. I'm already facing a lot of challenges while optimizing on-page elements. When I wanted to verify the ownership for Google Analytics and Webmaster Tool via his Godaddy account. the process failed many times. it looks like Godaddy is using some kind of caching not allowing us to modify the codes. For example, I'd applied the site verification codes for Webmasters Tool 48 hours ago, and the metatag for google site verification is not yet updated in the frontend. It's quite frustrating. What would you suggest?
Technical SEO | | suskanchan1 -
How to re structure a website & Google
I have a website that requires the site structure to be changed. The website doesnt have many backlnks and rankings are fairly low. I have 11,000 products on the website and want to know the best way to change the site structure without causing 404 errors all over the place. Do I 301 redirect every page? drop all 11,000 pages from the index by adding a no follow no index to all pages? I have the following structure www.domain.co.uk/make/model/part/product I want to change this to www.domain.co.uk/Part/make/model/product whats the best way to preserve the SEO, link juice and on a large scale? 11,000 pages. thank you shivun
Technical SEO | | seohive-2227200