Will multiple domains for the same local business hurt its rankings?
-
If I have a mold removal client who has domain1.com, which is several years old, and he creates a new domain2.com with the same info (reworded), but changes over the citations to domain2 will it
1. lower domain1.com's rankings?
2. make ranking either site harder since there are now 2 sites for the same thing?
3. reduce the ability for either site to gain a higher domain authority since links can now go to either
-
What is the purpose of the 2nd site?
The age of the domain a ranking factor, but one of many.
If he wants to change the domain your client can tell Google about a change of address in GWT and do a 301 redirect from the old site to the new site.
If the purpose is to have two sites ranking on the first page, a quicker and easier tactic would be to do some barnacle SEO (see http://moz.com/blog/barnacle-seo-whiteboard-friday) and get some of their citation / profile pages ranking on the 1st page for their mold related keywords.
With the recent updates and focus on quality it has become more difficult to try and operate multiple sub-niche sites, and will be much better to focus attention on creating one quality site which is seen as an authority.
-
Domain 1 had domain age, and the authority of the citation sites linking to it. Most likely Google had already crawled them, knew they existed, and will now have to recrawl and assign a new ranking. Be ready to wait a while.
This was very common at an SEO firm I used to work at, where they would create location or keyword-based domains in addition to the main branded domain in an effort to gain additional rank. They were frequently pummeled by the larger branded sites in rankings. Google targets these types of sites which have thin content, short term domain registrations, lack of citations/backlinks, etc etc.
If the site is hosted on the same ip address, in the same webmaster/analytics account AND has similar wording, I'm willing to bet Google will see them as similar and smack them both, or index the newer domain due to being seen as "fresher" content. Unless the time has been spent in giving both domains some love regarding citations and content I do not see this doing well in the SERP.
-
Websites compete against each other one page in the SERPs vs one page in the SERPs.
Let's imagine that you expand this idea... if two websites are better then ten websites should be awesome.
So you build ten websites, each with ten pages and put them out in the SERPs to compete. But your competitor puts those one hundred pages all on the same website.
Every time someone lands on that 100 page site they say.. "WOW this site has everything" and they tweet about it share it and link to it. That big site is going to become really popular.
You have ten websites and when people land on them they say... "meh... this site is OK but a am not tweentin' about it because that big site is a lot better":.
So, you can attack with ten slingshots or attack with one battleship, which one is going to defeat the competitor when you are fightin' one page in the SERPs vs one page in the SERPs?
All of my money is on the single big site with all of that awesome content.
The only time that I would consider making site #2 is when you have site #1 beating everybody everywhere. Then what it is going to do is push your competitor down in the SERPs, but really instead of starting that second site you should just be expanding the big site into new keywords.
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
-
Redirection of 100 domain to Main domain affects SEO?
Hi guys, An email software vendor managed by a different area of my company redirected 100 domains used for unsolicited email campaigns to my main domain. These domains are very likely to get blacklisted at some point. My SEO tool now is showing me all those domains as "linking" to my main site as do-follow links. The vendor states that this will not affect my main domain/website in any way. I'm highly concerned. I would appreciate your professional opinion about this. Thanks!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | anagentile0 -
What is better for web ranking? A domain or subdomain?
I realise that often it is better put content in a subfolder rather than a subdomain, but I have another question that I cannot seem to find the answer to. Is there any ranking benefit to having a site on a .co.uk or .com domain rather than on a subdomain? I'm guessing that the subdomain might benefit from other content on the domain it's hosted on, but are subdomains weighted down in any way in the search results?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RG_SEO0 -
Domain Authority: 23, Page Authority: 33, Can My Site Still Rank?
Greetings: Our New York City commercial real estate site is www.nyc-officespace-leader.com. Key MOZ metric are as follows: Domain Authority: 23
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
Page Authority: 33
28 Root Domains linking to the site
179 Total Links. In the last six months domain authority, page authority, domains linking to the site have declined. We have focused on removing duplicate content and low quality links which may have had a negative impact on the above metrics. Our ranking has dropped greatly in the last two months. Could it be due to the above metrics? These numbers seem pretty bad. How can I reverse without engaging in any black hat behavior that could work against me in the future? Ideas?
Thanks, Alan Rosinsky0 -
Compare the rankings
Hi All, I have an example 2 domains are targeting the same keyword, one of them ranks higher then another. Here is the image from OSE http://www.freeimagehosting.net/udq2f Would you be able to tell ( based on the image )which of the domains is winning , "domain 1" or "domain2" and what exactly the " looser " should do to improve its rankings Rgds Webdeal
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Webdeal0 -
What is Local Citation And how to get high ranking on targeted keyword
Hello Friends, Can anyone tell me what is Local Citation and how to optimize business on targeted keyword. What are the sources needed to optimize local listing on google places. I submit my business citation up to 50 local listing sites but the results are 0. My company got no leads Via local listings. Please tell me how would I optimize my company local listing citation and how to increase chances to get leads on local listing sites.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KLLC0 -
Geo-Domain Centralization - Helps or Hurts a Long-Term Campaign?
I have a client with nearly 100 geo-specific domains (example: serviceincity.com). The content is mostly duplicate, however they weren't affected by Panda or Penguin, and most of the domains have a PR2-PR4. Doesn't mean they won't eventually (I know). My strategy is to centralize all the city domains and 301 them to their main website (example: brandname.com/locations/city/). However, their IBL profile shows at least 50% of their IBLs coming from the geo-specific domains, which makes centralizing quite a scary thing for short-term ranking. Having these domains is obviously not scalable from a social media or video SEO perspective, and we all know that in the long-term brand rules and domaining drools. Before I suggest they that they 301 these domains, I thought I'd get feedback from the community. Will all that 301 redirecting give more weight to the primary domain's visibility and sustain the ranking at a page-level, or will it send a flag to Google that the site might have been using it's own network of websites to game results? (which wasn't the case, the owner was just hyper with dominating in each city). Thanks in advance for your feedback.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | stevewiideman0 -
Content on New Domain or Sub Directory of Existing Domain?
I have a client with a well aged, high DA site. They rank well for their wedding photography business in several cities. They are launching a new service which is related to photography (photobooths and flipbooks) which they built and developed content on a new domain. The existing domain has 0 links with a DA of 1. The site is brand new.. Is there any drawback to moving the existing content on the new domain to a sub directory of the high authority domain? EX: http://domain.com/newcompany The look, feel, and design of the new site / service is much different than the high DA site. My thoughts are that this will give them an automatic step up, especially since they will be marketing this in several major cities. Also, since the design will be different, if it is good to move to the subdir, should we put the new company name in the subdir folder or something keyword friendly like domain.com/photobooth as opposed to domain.com/newcompanyname. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | itrogers0 -
Will swear words present on my pages affect my rankings?
Hi There, I am in the process of formulating a listing policy for my site and I'm not sure whether I should add something in there for swear words. My site is an adult site and swear words come with the territory, unfortunately. Will user generated content with swear words affect my ranking? Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mulith0