Guidelines for a second website business domain

[MarzVentures]

Hi There,

A client is setting up a second website selling the same products from a separate domain with the same descriptions etc. The site will have a separate URL, but will administered from the same CMS. The only difference is the new site has only one brand instead of several on the main site.

E.G The main site sells all plumbing brands, the second site just one brand.

Your thoughts and advice for best practise would be much appreciated.

Andy (Marz Ventures)

[TimHolmes]

Although it may be a one product site, personally I would avoid running your new website whilst using the same content as this is going to start causing you duplicate content issues, this dupicate content is then possibly going to land your sites with penalties and may cause you to drop in the organic serps.

If you are adamant in doing this I would suggest marking your new sites content with rel canonical tags that reference your current site as the orignal authorative content location.

rel="canonical" href="http://www.domain.com/product-page/" />

However; my absolute personal recommendation would be to create your new site on a seperate host with a seperate CMS, and provide it with absolutely unique content this way the site will stand on its own two feet and likely do well with incurring duplicate penalties.

Hope that helps.

[EGOL]

a second website selling the same products from a separate domain with the same descriptions etc.

Duplicate content.  BAM!   One site will probably be filtered from the SERPs.

If they are linked together Google will spot that and totally kill one site almost immediately. Google has been killing duplicate content sites, linked together for about ten years.  Ten years.

Even if the sites are not linked together google will realize that there are two identical product pages competing in the SERPs and filter one of them.

Your thoughts and advice for best practise would be much appreciated.

If client's original site is not absolutely dominating the SERPS.  The time and money spent on a second site usually returns a lower ROI than working on the original site.

This client is attempting the lazy approach.  Just toss up duplicate pages and think they will make buckets of money.  Google figured that out ten years ago.  Everybody was doing that. Google figured that out to keep their SERPs clean.

I bet if client improved the current site by sharpening optimization, improving product descriptions, adding better photos, adding "how to do it" articles.  This client is in plumbing, the perfect business to produce informative content for accomplishing a repair and recommending the parts, tools, supplies and books needed.  There is where I would spend my time.

[MarzVentures]

Thanks Tim,

The aim is not to manipulate the rankings, but that a brand have asked them to sell products for them on a separate domain. Many businesses have duplicate trading names, but we are saying Google does not account for this and my client can be penalised.

Tricky one when you are not intentionally trying to manipulate rankings.

If we go the root of canonical tags would I be right in assuming we kill any chance for the new domain to rank?

Thanks for your time.

Andy.

[donford]

HI Andy,

The default answer would be this is not advised. The reason being is even though the second site is more focused you still are competing with yourself for rank on all the focused items. What is also alarming is that the statement "with the same descriptions etc". Now you are running into duplicate content issues. Search Engines try to give credit to the original author, when you put duplicate content on the web the search engines get to pick who the original author is. Lastly, you said it is going to be managed by the same CMS, which can mean that it maybe on a different domain but it will be on the same server, making it far more likely that it will considered duplicate content.

That is the default answer, but there are cases where it can make sense to run two websites that sell the same product. In fact that is what I manage. In our case, we are the manufacturer and a distributor. The manufacturing site doesn't sell products just explains how they are made and refers to the distribution sites for low volume orders. While the distribution site acknowledges the manufacture's site and refers custom applications back to them. These are two different classes of customers.

Another example would be in the service industry, lets say you run a concrete and cement mixing service. You may sell certain brands of concrete and cement and also physically deliver this product to job locations. Delivering cement can be an industry in and of itself, if you offer this service as standalone (bring your own cement) then it would make sense to run two websites, one offering the deliver service and one offering the actual product. In both cases you can cross reference each other for potential vertical integration.

Okay, now for standard practices. If you're going to run two domains pick two completely different host. You want your domains on different C-blocks. Second it is very strongly suggested that you do NOT use the same descriptions, write new content for each site. Lastly evaluate if the time and effort you spend to create a second site could not be better spent updating, optimizing, promoting your first site, it just may turn out that re-focusing efforts on a single site wins in the long run.

Remember Google is getting smarter every day they want to provide the very best results for every search that is entered into their system. If you can be creative and make your site the go to site for "whatever" then Google will eventually recognize that and return you as #1. Google is being proactive looking for business and people who are trying to trick them into serving erroneous top results. Gone are the days of "build it and they will come" now it is "build the best and they will come".

I hope this helps you,

Don

[MarzVentures]

Hi EGOL,

Thanks for your time on this. The reason for the second site is the company have been approached to represent a specific brand as an official brand distributor who want the products on a specific website.

I concur with your thoughts although I do feel my client is not attempting to manipulate Google, but the opportunity to be an official representative for a brand is one they are understandably keen to take.

Guess we have to set up a second CMS, content etc.

Thanks again.

Andy.

[EGOL]

Guess we have to set up a second CMS, content etc.

OK... submit to them.

If I ran a plumbing site and one brand tried to tell me how to run my biz I would do an analysis and determine where they fall into the market importance.   I might decide to....

A) quit selling their CrappyBrand Plumbing Supplies

B) quit selling all other brands and focus on their CadillacBrand Plumbing Supplies

C) continue as I am and see if they cancel me

D) build a little outhouse to sell their crappy stuff

E) keep my current site and put a lot of effort into a site that sells only their brand

Consider doing an analysis before you spend any effort to kiss their feet.  My crystal ball says there are going to be hundreds of sites selling their CrappyBrand Plumbing Supplies and nobody is going to be making good money from them.

The aim is not to manipulate the rankings,

Your client might not be trying to manipulate rankings.   But the plumbing manufacturer is trying to flood the SERPs and manipluate vendors.  My decision making would not be.... "Yes Sir".... or even binary.