Would it be a good idea to duplicate a website?

[yacpro13]

Hello,

here is the situation: let's say we have a website www.company1.com which is 1 of 3 main online stores catering to a specific market. In an attempt to capture a larger market share, we are considering opening a second website, say www.company2.com.

Both these websites have a different URL, but offer the same products for sale to the same clientele. With this second website, the theory is instead of operating 1 of 3 stores, we now operate 2 of 4.

We see 2 ways of doing this:

1. we launch www.company2.com as a copy of www.company1.com.
2. we launch www.company2.com as a completely different website.

The problem I see with either of these approaches is duplicate content. I think the duplicate content issue would be even more or a problem with the first approach where the entire site is mostly a duplicate. With the second approach, I think the duplicate content issue can be worked around by having completely different product pages and overall website structure.

Do you think either of these approaches could result in penalties by the search engines?

Furthermore, we all know that higher ranking/increased traffic can be achieved though high quality unique content, social media presence, on-going link-building and so on. Now assuming we have a fixed amount of manpower to provide for these tasks; do you think we have better odds of increasing our overall traffic by sharing the manpower on 2 websites, or putting it all behind a single one?

Thanks for your help!

[Travis_Bailey]

First, you're totally right about the possible duplicate content issue. No matter what, don't make a duplicate. If the only interest is crowding SERPs, you're destined for a bad time.

If your manpower is fixed in the short run, you're better off focusing on one property. If the systems administration on one property alone is hard, two will be killer. Now imagine all the necessities aside from that. You'll end up hating your life.

Clients have come to me with dozens of keyword+geo sites. The results are usually the same. That's when the culling of chaff begins. It ends in a single property that performs better than the dozen combined.

Instead, consider another strategy with your existing property. Is your product something that lends itself to the experiential side of things? Is there potential for frequent buying from one client, can they upgrade? Consider what you can do for the buyers you have.

If you can increase LTV, you might be able to increase staff in the long run. And that means more hands for more complex/interesting things. I would think about the situation like that.

[yacpro13]

Hello Travis,

I'm on the same page as you - I just wanted a third party's opinion.

Thank you!