Two businesses with the same adress

[Bob_van_Biezen]

Hi Guys,

A client of mine took over an competitors site 12 months ago. They sell almost the same products and both websites now list the same address on their contact page. Local search isn’t really important to them (webshops). They aren’t really active with Google plus reviews.  but I’m still wondering.

Could this cause any ranking problems? A lot of online citations still mention the old competitors address and two almost identical company’s with the same address sounds like an bad idea. Any suggestions about this topic?

Just as a side note: the competitors site lost a lot of traffic, which is caused by a lot of different problems (double site migration were they didn’t think about SEO). So I would love the hear your thoughts about this specific ranking problem.

Thanks a lot!

[NEdocs]

Well, if local search isn't a concern then this might just fly. But I think neglecting local SEO (even as a webshop) is a poor decision. There could be an abundance of untapped local traffic - why ignore any relevant (and easier to rank for) traffic? My only concern here is the indexing of NAP information...not sure how Google will handle it...but they generally are not fans of a duplicated company presence (ie.multiple Google+ pages, duplicate content, etc.)

If you really want to prevent any issues and strengthen the performance of their site...I say merge these bad boys together. As you said, they sell almost the same products - and one is performing poorly. Why even attempt to split the traffic?

Best,

Christopher

[libero_net]

We've had situations similar where a client has multiple ecommerce stores both with the same physical address on contact page and they weren't penalised or hurt by any traffic loss, however although they were selling products from same catalogue, there were distinct differences within the content.

2 separate brands were used, and unique product descriptions & category descriptions for example. Individual social media channels with unique content also.

So these other factors perhaps need to be taken in consideration and context is important?

Is all the content on the sites the same?

Cheers

Dan

[Bob_van_Biezen]

Hi Dan,

Thanks for your answer! Our situation is exactly the same. Different brands, social channels, unique content etc. it's like coca cola and pepsi on the same adress. Both selling the same, but different.

Good to hear your story. In this case I will just start cleaning up all the other mess of the site migration first and will see what happens.

Thanks a lot!

[libero_net]

Hi Bob

Sounds good, it's hard to be certain on this when you have the other issues and variables in play. Would first look at cleaning other issues first.

But I do also agree with the guys above you might also need to consider the value against the cost of trying to rank with 2 positions on search engines or whether it's more cost effective to merge and focus all efforts on 1 site.

Let us know how you get on.

Cheers

Dan

[Bob_van_Biezen]

Hi Christopher,

Thanks for your response!

I totally agree with you. Local is a chance an webshop should take. In this situation however local is a small issue, my main concern is recovering the 80% traffic loss in the last year during to a double failed site migration and bad user metrics. In this case I want to keep both shops separated since historically they both performed great.

Merging both now would mean we take the traffic loss as it is. I believe it’s possible to recover at least to a certain point in this situation since these problems aren’t spam / thin content related.

[NEdocs]

Hey Bob,

It would almost be easier if it was spam or thin content related. My suggestion would be to drop your ill performing site completely...or get ready for a bit of a wait. Because of the double site migration/poor user metrics...there is no fast recourse. Once this damage has been done, it is going to take some time for it to regain its rankings. Essentially you are dealing with a fresh start.

Is there no way to access the old URLs to perform some redirects? That would be your best bet in restoring this baby to its glory.

[Bob_van_Biezen]

Yeah it will probably take 6-12 months to recover (or to get near the previous traffic). Redirects are on the road map and a lot of other stuff as well. Actually I wrote an whole report about the problems some time ago, but a lot of points haven’t been implemented by the developer. So that’s why we’re taking on the project again since the current situation clearly doesn’t resolve itself.

The address situation is just an point I stumbled upon just now. At the time I wrote the report both brands had their own unit number within the same complex.

[NEdocs]

Fair enough! I think the duplicate address issue won't cause any problems as long as your content is unique...I wouldn't sweat it! Worse case scenario, you start competing with yourself for page 1 rankings

[Bob_van_Biezen]

Whaha that's the goal actually Thanks for you responses!