2-websites focused on different markets but similar content

[BBuck]

Hi all! I have a client who wants to branch out to another market (currently in Northern California and wants to open an office in Southern California), what would happen if we put up a second website that has similar content, but is exclusively for Southern California, with a different office address, and all the content geared towards Southern California market? There would be NO linking between the sites. Would that generate a penalty?

Thanks! BB

[DennisSeymour]

Hi BB

I have tried this before (on different boxes though) and it didn't cause any issues.

I would still advice to at least change bits of the content if possible. The design and everything could be the same.

[Devanur-Rafi]

Hi,

I agree with Dennis here.

One question that you can ask yourself:

"Why should Google have two websites with substantially similar content in their index?"

So, the answer would be to come up with substantially unique content on both the websites so that both of them can pass Google's radar safely  and justify their presence in their index.

In the past, I worked with a client who had multiple websites operating in the same niche but catering to different states in the US. With almost identical content on many of them, they were not at all ranking good in the search engines overall. We had the content rewritten in such a way that all of them had unique content (please note that all these domains still operated in the same niche but with slightly different keywords/phrases based on the differences in naming conventions in different states). This worked wonders. The results exceeded all the expectations of the client. There was a dramatic increase in the total number of pages from these domains in Google's index along with a whopping increase in overall ranking for many of the competitive terms in the search engines.

With substantially unique, updated, highly relevant and useful content, you will see a healthy and steady growth in your SEO ROI. Those were my two cents my friend. Good Luck to you.

Best regards,

Devanur Rafi

[BBuck]

Great. Thanks!

[BBuck]

Thanks for your thoughtful response! Cheers!