Duplicate Content on 2 Sites - Advice

[SEOLeaders]

We have one client who has an established eCommerce Site and has created another site which has the exact same content which is about to be launched. We want both sites to be indexed but not be penalised for duplicate content.

The sites have different domains

The sites have the same host

We want the current site to be priority, so the new site would not be ranking higher in SERPs.

Any advice on setting up canonical, author tags, alternate link tag etc

Thanks

Rich

[PracticeFusion]

Hi Rich,

Why have two different sites with the exact same content? If I could understand a bit more about the reasoning and the specifics then I should be able to provide a half decent answer :).

Phil

[blacey]

Could you not just have the new domain name redirecting to the original site?

Personally I don't think its a good idea to have canonical links pointing to another domain, you might want to reword some of the content and headings on site 2 and re-arrange the content on the page (Add in different images with different alt text) or maybe even amend the site URL structure if possible. This would make that site different in the eyes of Google.

It would be a good way of targeting different keywords for different domains, but I agree with Phil, we would need more information to be able to provide a comprehensive answer.