Two domains and content? - Quesiton from Client

[Hunter]

Hi All -

I built a site for a client a couple of months ago:
http://www.cranberrycorners.ca/home.shtml
It does Ok on Google - it's usually listed on the 2nd page for her keywords.
So she's gone and bought a 2nd domain that is more google friendly with the
hopes of getting higher rankings for her site:
http://www.ottawa-gift-baskets.com

I currently have the 2nd domain parked so it is just a redirect to the
original site.

She wondered why I could not just duplicate the websites - and I could not
give her a good answer as to why that is not a good idea.

*IS* it a good idea ? Apart from me ensuring the sites are sync'd - are
there any issues with having this duplicate content ? I thought they may
fight each other for Google ranking - but what difference would that make ?

Any advice, comments much appreciated.

david

 

[Denise]

Hi All -

I built a site for a client a couple of months ago:
http://www.cranberrycorners.ca/home.shtml
It does Ok on Google - it's usually listed on the 2nd page for her keywords.
So she's gone and bought a 2nd domain that is more google friendly with the
hopes of getting higher rankings for her site:
http://www.ottawa-gift-baskets.com

I currently have the 2nd domain parked so it is just a redirect to the
original site.

She wondered why I could not just duplicate the websites - and I could not
give her a good answer as to why that is not a good idea.

*IS* it a good idea ? Apart from me ensuring the sites are sync'd - are
there any issues with having this duplicate content ? I thought they may
fight each other for Google ranking - but what difference would that make ?

Any advice, comments much appreciated.

david

It is definitely not a good idea. It is considered spamming the search
engines. Search engines penalize sites in the rankings - or may drop the
listing altogether - if the site's content is not unique. Better to be on
the second page, than no page! Pick one domain name and stick with it.

It is not the domain name that matters most when it comes to rankings, it is
the site's content. Rather than messing with alternate domain names, etc.
work on optimizing the content - and to a lesser degree, the design - of the
site and the rankings will improve.

best,
Denise

 

[Duende]

While sitting in a puddle Hunter scribbled in the mud:

Hi All -

I built a site for a client a couple of months ago:
http://www.cranberrycorners.ca/home.shtml
It does Ok on Google - it's usually listed on the 2nd page for her
keywords. So she's gone and bought a 2nd domain that is more google
friendly with the hopes of getting higher rankings for her site:
http://www.ottawa-gift-baskets.com

I currently have the 2nd domain parked so it is just a redirect to the
original site.

She wondered why I could not just duplicate the websites - and I could
not give her a good answer as to why that is not a good idea.

*IS* it a good idea ? Apart from me ensuring the sites are sync'd -
are there any issues with having this duplicate content ? I thought
they may fight each other for Google ranking - but what difference
would that make ?

Google doesn't like mirror sites & may drope both of them.

 

[Hunter]

make

It is definitely not a good idea. It is considered spamming the search
engines. Search engines penalize sites in the rankings - or may drop the
listing altogether - if the site's content is not unique. Better to be on
the second page, than no page! Pick one domain name and stick with it.

It is not the domain name that matters most when it comes to rankings, it is
the site's content.

Thanks Denise for the quick reply.

re: the domain name: I thought the hyphens in the new url:
ottawa-gift-baskets would be beneficial for her keywords which are "Ottawa
gift baskets". Is this not true ?

Thanks again! david

 

[Steve R.]

Denise wrote in message ...

It is definitely not a good idea. It is considered spamming the search
engines. Search engines penalize sites in the rankings - or may drop the
listing altogether - if the site's content is not unique.

What evidence do you have for that?

If small changes are made to the title, keywords and a little of the
content, how can a search engine possibly know that it's not a completely
different website?

 

[Richard]

Hi All -

I built a site for a client a couple of months ago:
http://www.cranberrycorners.ca/home.shtml
It does Ok on Google - it's usually listed on the 2nd page for her
keywords. So she's gone and bought a 2nd domain that is more google
friendly with the hopes of getting higher rankings for her site:
http://www.ottawa-gift-baskets.com

I currently have the 2nd domain parked so it is just a redirect to the
original site.

She wondered why I could not just duplicate the websites - and I could
not give her a good answer as to why that is not a good idea.

*IS* it a good idea ? Apart from me ensuring the sites are sync'd - are
there any issues with having this duplicate content ? I thought they may
fight each other for Google ranking - but what difference would that make
?

Any advice, comments much appreciated.

david

Swap the contents onto the new domain name.
Then redirect from the original site.
Just say "cranberry corners has moved to a new site".

 

[Denise]

it

Thanks Denise for the quick reply.

re: the domain name: I thought the hyphens in the new url:
ottawa-gift-baskets would be beneficial for her keywords which are "Ottawa
gift baskets". Is this not true ?

Thanks again! david

Hi David,

There may or may not be some benefit in using ottawa-gift-baets.ca instead
of cranberrycorners.ca. Some search engines may take the domain name into
account when determining page rank. Whether it will make much of a
difference is debatable; it is probably pretty negligible.

Also, hyphens can be problematic. How will you tell your customers -
verbally - what the URL is?
You would say: "ottawa hyphen gift hyphen baskets dot com" -- hard for folks
to remember all those hyphens, and sounds rather generic
But "cranberry corners dot ca" is much easier and more memorable

Here are a couple takes on the subject:
http://www.searchengineguide.com/whalen/2002/0627_jw1.html
http://www.searchengineguide.com/1stsearchranking/2001/0302_1st1.html
http://www.addme.com/issue140.htm

My own primary website has a keyword-free name (like cranberrycorners) but
consistently ranks in the top 1-3 results for my targeted keywords anyway -
it is the content that got those rankings, not the domain name.

If I were you, I'd just keep cranberrycorners.ca and optimise it for the
search engines. There's a lot you could do to make it more search-engine
friendly.

Whatever you choose to do, use one domain name or the other. Using both
would be disastrous.


best,
Denise

 

[Denise]

Denise wrote in message ...

What evidence do you have for that?

If small changes are made to the title, keywords and a little of the
content, how can a search engine possibly know that it's not a completely
different website?

All major search engines have algorithms to check for duplicate content. If
content is substantially the same for two websites, they may both be dropped
substantially in the rankings, or dropped completely. This is well-known in
the SEO world.

Google even tells us, very directly not to post duplicate content. See:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html#quality
Other search engines have very similar guidelines.

best,
Denise

 

[Hunter]

Hi David,

There may or may not be some benefit in using ottawa-gift-baets.ca instead
of cranberrycorners.ca. Some search engines may take the domain name into
account when determining page rank. Whether it will make much of a
difference is debatable; it is probably pretty negligible.

Also, hyphens can be problematic. How will you tell your customers -
verbally - what the URL is?
You would say: "ottawa hyphen gift hyphen baskets dot com" -- hard for folks
to remember all those hyphens, and sounds rather generic
But "cranberry corners dot ca" is much easier and more memorable

Here are a couple takes on the subject:
http://www.searchengineguide.com/whalen/2002/0627_jw1.html
http://www.searchengineguide.com/1stsearchranking/2001/0302_1st1.html
http://www.addme.com/issue140.htm

My own primary website has a keyword-free name (like cranberrycorners) but
consistently ranks in the top 1-3 results for my targeted keywords anyway -
it is the content that got those rankings, not the domain name.

If I were you, I'd just keep cranberrycorners.ca and optimise it for the
search engines. There's a lot you could do to make it more search-engine
friendly.

Whatever you choose to do, use one domain name or the other. Using both
would be disastrous.

Thanks again Denise.

We were actually going use cranberrycorners.ca for marketing, promotional
material, to verbalize the website and just use ottawa-gift-baskets for the
search engine.

I'll be sure to read up on the links you sent.

Merci, david

 

[Denise]

Denise wrote in message ...

What evidence do you have for that?

If small changes are made to the title, keywords and a little of the
content, how can a search engine possibly know that it's not a completely
different website?

And here is some more on duplicate content, and what the various major
search engines have to say about it:
http://www.seologic.com/faq/mirror-sites-pages.php

best,
Denise

 

[Mike H]

All major search engines have algorithms to check for duplicate content. If
content is substantially the same for two websites, they may both be dropped
substantially in the rankings, or dropped completely. This is well-known in
the SEO world.
Google even tells us, very directly not to post duplicate content. See:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html#quality
Other search engines have very similar guidelines.

They mean farms of duplicate content, which has the purpose of spamming
the search engine. It's *NOT* spamming to have, say a backup site with the
same content. It's not uncommon to have a backup site on another domain
just in case the server would be down. That 's *not* a trick to fool the search
engine and I'd be very surprised if you can proove for us that Google would
consider such a case as "not allowed".

/Mike
MHC Synthesizers and Effects. http://www.mhc.se/software/plugins/

 

[Mike H]

And here is some more on duplicate content, and what the various major

search engines have to say about it:
http://www.seologic.com/faq/mirror-sites-pages.php

It's clearly written: "substantially duplicate content".
Having a spare site is *not* substantially duplicate content.
A farm of 200 sites is.

 

[Karim]

All major search engines have algorithms to check for duplicate content. If
content is substantially the same for two websites, they may both be dropped
substantially in the rankings, or dropped completely. This is well-known in
the SEO world.

They better differentiate between two identical sites that were submitted
to them and the case were they find the mirror site themselves.
If I never submitted the mirror site and their spider founds it, they
better not penalize my first site in the rankings.
I guess I would put a robots.txt in the mirror site and tell spiders not to
index anything.

 

[Denise]

It's clearly written: "substantially duplicate content".
Having a spare site is *not* substantially duplicate content.
A farm of 200 sites is.

Having a spare site which you submit to search engines is *exactly*
duplicate content. Duplicate means just that - more than one. Don't have
more than one site or page with the same content - that is playing with
fire.

The search engines simply prohibit:
--- "duplicate site or pages" (GOOGLE:
http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html)
--- "multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate
content." (GOOGLE: http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html)
--- "duplicate pages." (ALTA VISTA:
http://www.altavista.com/help/search/faq_web#16)
[They go on to say, "If you spot duplicates, please let us know by
reporting the duplicate pages via our Email form; please select "Spam
Reporting" in the Subject pull-down menu."]
--- "Multiple sites offering the same content" (INKTOMI:
http://www.inktomi.com/products/web_search/guidelines.html)

It doesn't have to be 200 sites! Just one duplicate site is enough to hurt
your rankings.

If you want to keep a second site as a backup in case something dire happens
to the first one, that's cool. Just use robots.txt to exclude it from the
search engine robots, don't publicize it, don't link to it & don't submit it
to search engines/directories. That way you still have your backup with no
risk of getting one or both sites penalized.

best,
Denise

 

[Bill Logan]

make

It is definitely not a good idea. It is considered spamming the search
engines. Search engines penalize sites in the rankings - or may drop the
listing altogether - if the site's content is not unique. Better to be on
the second page, than no page! Pick one domain name and stick with it.

Well that has to be one of the best reasons I have heard so far for avoiding
search engines.
Who the heck do they think they are dictating to people 'do it our way or we
wont list you'?

Personally I find having duplicate sites with different domain names - same
content benificial business wise. The names themselves target different
target groups who want the same product but are attracted to buy by the site
name.

Thank goodness I do not depend or require visitors from search engine
listings. I dont care if any of my sites are never found on any of them.
While they have a use when it comes to looking for something I am begining
to wonder how many useful sites dont get listed with the result that what is
found may not be the option one wants.

From what I can see, google and others refuse to list legitimate business
sites if they want to have two with the same content yet are quite happy to
list, and sometimes give good rankings to, web sites of a dubious nature
such as porno, hate sites and how to make WOMD - so long as those websites
conform to their rules - go figure!

It is not the domain name that matters most when it comes to rankings, it is
the site's content. Rather than messing with alternate domain names, etc.
work on optimizing the content - and to a lesser degree, the design - of the
site and the rankings will improve.

May be not but the domain name can be the most important thing when it comes
down to good old fashoined marketing. Sometimes it is best to forget about
insidious search engine rankings and concentrate on what will attractract
customers!

 

[PeterMcC]

Whilst the benefit of the hyphenated name is relatively small, that can be
multiplied several times over by using absolute URLs, have a look at the
code for:
http://www.hotel-ireland.com/ (1st for "Ireland hotels" in Google) or
http://www.travel-hotels-ireland.com/ - ugly - truly ugly - but effective.

 

[Michael]

Swap the contents onto the new domain name.
Then redirect from the original site.
Just say "cranberry corners has moved to a new site".

That solution should work for everyone. I work with a lot of mom and pop
businesses many of which had mirror sites when I met them. They seemed to
feel that if you build the right domain name, they will come. It seems as
if they see domain name creation as effective marketing.

None of these mirror sites seemed to ever have been penalized, but how would
I know? None of them had any SEO, their efforts at internet marketing were
directed towards creating catchy or keyword rich domain names. It was if
they believed that people typed www.searchterm.com into the browser.

The only solution that satisfies all is to focus SEO efforts on one site and
redirect all the traffic attracted by other domain names to that main site.
Most searchers wouldn't even notice.

It is a pain to verbalize Ottawa hyphen gift hyphen baskets dot com. Use
both domains and redirect the traffic from one to the other. I've never
heard of a penalty for redirects.

M