15 replies to this topic

[Kelly]

Earlier this year I expanded my site and put up a second domain (from what I have read a bad choice - the domains are fairly heavily cross linked through the site menu / navigation) the products on the new domain are related to the original domain. The site is still under the aging delay (It was put up in late January). My question is should I move the new product line back to the original domain?

ie: domain.com/newproducts

My host does not use Apache so I am unable to use a 301 or 302 redirect, but I can use a 404 error page. Most if not all of the pages have been spidered & indexed by Google and MSN, and I have some good/excellent placement in MSN.

Should I switch hosts and do a permanent or temporary redirect? or should I leave the sites alone? When using the 301 redirect will visitors who click on the link will they be sent to the redirected URL or just when you use a 302 redirect.

The best page rank the the new domain has is a 3, and I doubt that I have many incoming links, since I did not do a linking campaign. If there are any links, they would have most likely been picked up through the search engines.

Thanks,
Kelly

[Jill]

My question is should I move the new product line back to the original domain?

Why?

[Kelly]

I had read that cross-linking is a big no-no. (I guess spammers use this technique inflate link popularity) Maybe I was mistaken...

Because of the navigation of both sites (Navigation is almost identical) every page on each site points to the home page on the other site. The original reason for creating the 2nd site are: 1. The possibility of running out of space on the 1st site due to a lot of images if we added the new section. 2. The 1st site uses a fair amount of bandwidth and did not want to be flagged as using excessive bandwidth.

In another forum I asked a similar question and this was part of the response:

You are putting yourself at great risk so as to eventually lose all for both domains. It's just the way it is. You are "always" better off with ONE great website. It's easier, and with NO risk to link within one site than it is to interlink multiple sites.

Edited by Kelly, 13 July 2005 - 10:24 AM.

[Randy]

Cross linking is not necessarily a bad thing as long as you're not duplicating content and not having two sites simply to trick the engines into ranking both well for the same search terms.

That said, I'm a big fan of keeping it on one site if possible, simply because it means you're not doubling your work on the backlink building side of the equation.

FWIW, I assume that you're probably on a Windows hosting platform. It can be configured to deliver 301 responses as well, so you don't have to go with a *nix hosting plan to accomplish that task should you decide to combine sites. If you don't have administrator's privileges you would have to get your host involved to set that up correctly.

On the other hand, as I'm reading it the main concern was the storage space allotment and monthly bandwidth allotment. Your host should be able to work out something for you that covers your needs is less than the cost of two separate hosting accounts. If they can't, then it may be time to look for a new host or even consider looking into getting your own server.

You can lease servers these days pretty cheaply if you don't mind managing it yourself, or for slightly more to have someone else manage it for you. That would do away with any of those disk space - bandwidth concerns for a long time most likely.

[Kelly]

Randy,

My intentions are not to "trick the engines into ranking both well for the same search terms". The search terms are different since it is a different product. I sell coins and paper money on the site. The main site offers U.S. coins, paper money, coin supplies, world paper money and notgeld. Late last year we decided to try world coins.

We looked down the road and thought it might be best to go with a new domain. The reasoning being due to the amount of images from the world coins and additional pictures from the original products as we get new items. Our intentions are to make it easy for our customers to find and purchase our products.

The U.S. coins & supplies section is a slightly different layout than the rest of the site. It was the first part of the site when we originally went online. Then as we added the paper money and notgeld we changed the page style. The new domain follows the new style and "seemlessly" integrates in to the site.

I do not have administrator's privileges, and I doubt that the host would want to get involved in that.

At this time there is a fair amount of room on the original domain so the new domain/site pages could be moved to the original domain. Later I can reconfigure the site's pages so the images are stored on the new domain, and just leave the pages on the original site. That would allow for future expansion within the original domain. Would it be better to do that now, or just keep the pages on both domains.

Thanks again

[Dragon]

Hi Kelly,
I agree with Randy that there is nothing *wrong* with having multiple domains - as long as they are not duplicates.

The only other concern that I would raise is that if your sites are "heavily" cross linked, is this not delivering a bad user experience to your visitors? (assuming of course that the sites each have a unique look and feel and browser experience..)
But you have already answered this by stating the navigation is very similar...if the layouts change..it could still interfere and mess up your conversions.

I would agree with Randy & rather keep it within the first site...you could always use your second domain as a niche - and only have the products listed thereon perhaps - but also on the first site...as I know when i browse sites and suddenly see an outbound URL, i usually dont complete the action...

[Kelly]

Dragon,

The new site is wcoins.com. If you visit the site, and click on a link to the world paper money, U.S paper money or notgeld you will see the navigation is pretty much identical and the layout the same basic style. You can also see that whatever page you are on except for some of the picture "asp" pages there is a link to wcoins.com or the main site.

If I move the world coins to the original domain, what would you recommend that I do so that visitors finding wcoins through the search engines see. A 404 error page that tells them the page has moved? Move my site to a server with apache and do a 301 or 302 redirect? At this point I am not sure what would be best.

Thanks again

[Scottie]

I think it's fine, Kelly. You aren't duplicating the content and it makes sense to link the two together, you are simply focusing one site on a more narrow product line.

I don't think the engines would have an issue with it. I'd leave it.

Do be aware though that many of the human-edited directories won't list both sites as they are essentially all one company, but that really shouldn't hurt you.

[Kelly]

Thanks, Scottie,

I was hoping that there would not be a problem with it.. If the human-edited directories do not list it, that is fine.

Kelly

[Scottie]

You DO need some incoming links to that site, though! Don't overlook that.

Hopefully there are some great collector sites out there and other hobby sites devoted to coin collecting (and I imagine there are a lot!) that would link to you, either as a service to their readers or as an advertising link.

[Jill]

Kelly, there was probably no real reason to do it to begin with, but since it's done, it just doesn't seem like it would be worthwhile changing it now if it's not giving you any problems.

Just link to it like you would if it really was part of your site, and you should be fine. Other forums sometimes go overboard erring on what they think is the "safe" side, but nothing in this biz is as black and white as some would like to make it.

It's doubtful that you will have any problems doing what you're doing. If you find it becomes unmanageable the way it is and want to change it, then go ahead, but please don't just change it because some forum members are scaring you into it!

[torka]

We have a site that is actually three domains (well, two domains and a subdomain, if you want to get technical about it). There's the original web site, an externally hosted web store, and the product support site. Two of them are hosted on IIS and one on Apache. One is written in ASP, one in ASP.NET and one is straight HTML. They all share the same look and feel and the navigation is fully integrated among the three. For all intents and purposes, they are a single, multi-domain site.

In addition, we have a fourth niche site that further highlights a specific product line of ours. Although it is intended as a stand-alone site, it does share a similar look and feel with the other three (it's something of a corporate "look" for us) and it interlinks extensively with the support subdomain and web store pages that are devoted to items from that product line.

As of this writing, they all four rank just fine in the SERPs across all major SEs. Of course, one can never tell what any individual SE will decide to do next, but at this point it doesn't seem to have caused any problem for us. I should also maybe mention that the basics of this setup have been in place since late 2003 and the original site has been around a lot longer than that, so this isn't some kind of "johnny-come-lately" site.

(FTR, most of this set up predates my arrival on the scene. I probably wouldn't have configured it this way had I been there at the start, but I inherited it when I got here -- and since I live by the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" theory of webmastering, I pretty much just left things as I found them...)

HTH!

--Torka

[Jill]

They all share the same look and feel and the navigation is fully integrated among the three. For all intents and purposes, they are a single, multi-domain site.

Yep, which is really all they are.

There are thousands of sites like this because it often makes good business sense to separate things that way.

It is true that unfortunately, in their attempt to remove the sites that use multiple domains as a trick to gain additional search rankings, sometimes a real network of sites will get filtered out by mistake.

The main thing is to not do anything to hide what you're doing, because you have nothing to hide! That way if for some reason your sites got nuked by mistake, it's probable that you could contact the engines and point out that although it might have at first appeared like a mini net, your sites are all on the up and up.

I would like to think that the engines would eventually take a look and unfilter yours, if that were the case.

[Kelly]

Thanks to all for the information... The original site has been around since atleast when Jill and Heather were doing "Rankwrite" I think, or whatever the site was. I used to get the newsletter, and most of my SEO was very similar to the information offered there. I may have had the site up before they started that, but I am not sure.

The site has the same feel for the most part, except for the U.S. coins & supplies which I mentioned earlier.

Scottie, I am aware that I need incoming links, and due to the image galleries and the amount of pictures we offer it has never been a problem getting links from other sites. I am sure wcoins will fare as well. We do have some links now, but I have not been actively involved in getting them.

Jill, changing/moving the site would be as easy as uploading the pages to the old domain, then I could put a 404 error page on wcoins.com I wrote software generate the site for me, so all I have to do is change 1 thing, generate the pages and upload them, and it is done.

Once again I would like to thank those that have responded.

[Jill]

I used to get the newsletter, and most of my SEO was very similar to the information offered there. I may have had the site up before they started that, but I am not sure.

I've been doing the newsletter in one form or another since June 2000.

So you were one of the original subscribers? Randy was too, if I recall!