2 Websites Targeting Similar Keywords

[GrouchyKids]

One of my clients is set on setting up another website targeting some of the keywords/services on the main site.

One of the services they offer gets traffic from natural search and also Adwords but doesn't convert well for this service. For other services (which are often utilized at the same time by the customers) the site converts well.

My client feels that... "people are not converting on the main site because they click on the page and realise that we are a wider company. From this they probably work out that we don’t actually produce Green Widgets and we just buy them in. Therefore we will be more expensive than a company who does manufacture Green Widgets (although there are only a few in the country who actually make them)."

The new site "...will have more of a manufacturer and specialist feel. There will be a small mention of other services. People visiting will think we are specialists and that we make them, whereas at the moment they may feel that they are just being cross sold a product. We have also noticed that we are not being found earlier enough and we are contacted to do other work only to find that another company is providing the Green Widgets."

I did something similar back in the day, but here we ran a local website and a national website covering the same products. We tried hard not to duplicate the keywords we targeted minimising this as much as possible. I don't think we cared much about the local site as the national one went crazy busy.

In essence, my client wants to do the following:

Main Site...
Blue Widgets Bristol
Red Widgets Bristol
Green Widgets Bristol (This would be retained)

New Site...
The new site would focus on Green Widgets

In time the new site would include content for...
Green Widgets
Green Widgets Bristol (As per the main site)
Green Widgets Cardiff

It would also make mention of Blue Widgets and Red Widgets as possible addons.

The new site would be at the same address but have its own companies house registration, emails and phone numbers.

My feeling is that we should take an above-board, risk-free approach and remove the Green Widgets service from the main site to ensure it doesn't upset Google. In other words go out of our way to minimise targeting of similar/same keywords across the 2 sites.

My client strongly disagrees showing evidence of others using similar tactics (we have had the EMD debate as well).

I am also concerned about Google Places and how this might be viewed here.

Opinions please, also any idea of what if any action Google would take if we push forwards?

[Chris.Menke]

I think I'd be more concerned about your google my business than the overlap in the sites, especially if the content is different. But, have you or the client examined the backlinks and authority of the other sites using similar tactics? The bottom of the search results is chock full of sites who used some tactic or another because they thought that was what was working for a competitor, when, in fact, it wasn't.

You would need different phone numbers and physical addresses to differentiate the "two" businesses in GMB.

[GrouchyKids]

Hi Chris,

Thanks, for your reply I was quite concerned about GMB, the addresses won't be different.  Is there a way around this plenty of business  (legitimately) do have the same address.  My concern is that the services would overlap, both on the websites themselves but also categories in third party citations.

Also yes we did check and competitors are involved in similar practices.  One does well with an EMD although we are not going down this route.

[Chris.Menke]

As per guidelines, I  don't think there's a problem either way. Algorithmicly, it seems like it would take some time to build up the authority of the new site but that would be normal. I still think you may have an address issue with GMB, though.

[GrouchyKids]

Just checked out https://moz.com/blog/gmb-multiple-businesses-same-address

From what I can see from the above as long as the business names are distinctly different it should be OK.

Or perhaps if the services are the same this won't be enough and we will have to maintain a single listing with just one of the brand names.

It's not 100% clear from the article.

[Chris.Menke]

I'll certainly take Miriam's  word for it. I guess I'm out of date on google local.  Thanks for the heads up.