Two Online Stores on Same Niche on Same C Block: Open for Member Discussion

[rustybrick]

The next question in a series of Search Engine Roundtable Moderator Threads (http://forums.seroundtable.com/showthread.php?t=115) was submitted by EGOL (http://forums.seroundtable.com/member.php?u=169), who we all adore here; he asks;

Let's say I own two nice websites... one about economics and one about widgets The economics site is an info site and the widgets site is retail. These have been on the web for several years.

Both of these sites have been on same server for a long time and although they have different IPs they are on same C block and are only a couple digits away from one another.

The economics site holds top turf for lots economics terms and the widgets site holds top turf for lots of widgets terms. Right now the widgets site gets two links from the economics site - one on the homepage as a sponsor and one on an interior page about widgets as a sponsor. There are no links from widgets to economics.

I was missing lots of sales because everybody who visits the economics site likes widgets.

I decided against giving widgets links from about 1/2 of the pages on economics that are most relevant. That would be hundreds of links and it would look like I am trying to manipulate rankings.

So, I built a store on economics and now it is starting to show up in the top ten for a lot of the widgets terms - beneath my widgets website.

Do you think that any of the SEs will penalize one or both of my sites because they are both in the SERPs for common search terms?

I don't want to do anything sneaky like hide my whois or move the servers around. There is nothing unethical about me owning two toy stores on the same street downtown. Is that a problem on the web? Should I do something different than the way it is set-up.

From Moderators Roundtable at http://forums.seroundtable.com/showthread.php?t=392

[Phoenix]

Challenging and fun question EGOL! Glad you shared this with us. I have come across the same situation with a client who had two separate stores on the similar C-Class but one was wholesale and one was retail. It started to cause problems because they were selling more wholesale then retail products which was reducing there revenue each month. The wholesale was out ranking the retail. The wonderful part is the the top 3 listing were dominated by my clients products. So they were getting a good deal of traffic because of it. Due to the preference for wholesale, we decided to re-optimize the site, mainly the titles and on-page elements, and moved the hosting to a separate hosting company.

What happened is we lost the duplicate rankings, BUT gained benefical rankings on terms that we did not hold before. This allowed us to grab a better spread of total traffic from that industry and still maintain/grow traffic levels, while raising revenue slightly.

However your situation is different. Your essentially having an adsense marketer wet dream, double the traffic for less effort. I don't see a problem leaving the situation as is. The two websites are completely different. Your economics site is not outranking the widgets site. Actually this might be a good time to observe an interesting relevancy problem in Google and see how they take care of it. They may eventually take out one site and leave the primary Widgets site. Or do nothing at all.

Couple questions, I need clarification one:

I decided against giving widgets links from about 1/2 of the pages on economics that are most relevant. That would be hundreds of links and it would look like I am trying to manipulate rankings.

Do you still have links to the widgets site on 1/2 your pages? Or did you take them off?

So, I built a store on economics and now it is starting to show up in the top ten for a lot of the widgets terms - beneath my widgets website.

So you built a store on... a subdomain ...subdirectory ...back of an ice cream truck? :) Did you include links to the widgets site from store?


Do you think that any of the SEs will penalize one or both of my sites because they are both in the SERPs for common search terms?

No, I personally don't think you will get penalized for this. Both sites shall remain ranked and favored by Google. If they are as old as they say then its not a problem. The only thing I see as causing a problem, is if you start cross-linking them together.

Currently, I am betting Google is seeing both sites as separate unique websites, owned by 2 different people. They have no reason to suspect otherwise. Age incidentially makes it easier to trust, but harder to keep track of sometimes. I think the only way you are in trouble is if your Cross-Link these websites back and forth. If you do, then bamn! no more rankings. It would be apparent that your network too close.

[randfish]

EGOL - I don't think you're in any particular danger, but I would adopt one of two strategies for the future:

1. Move the widgets site to a different server (preferrably at a different company). You might even consider transferring the DNS records to your wife or something similar. This way, you could maintain the two sites without fear of reprisal. Go as far as you want on the path on the path of paranoia here - use separate browsers to rank check for each, don't install GG tracking (toolbar, analytics, adsense, etc.) that would tie them together in GG's eyes.

2. Re-build the widgets store as a subdomain of the economics site and 301 it over. You might lose rankings for a little while, but for the long term, you'll have a single site that still has the possibility to dominate the SERPs with dual rankings (subdomains can be listed together in the SERPs).

These are simple explanations of the ideas, and would require lots of fleshing out to make them work, but they're the two courses I'd consider if you're thinking long-term stability and profitability rather than just short-term rankings.

[rustybrick]

I personally may just word the products very differently between the two sites. Even though they may be the same products, I may use words that differentiate them from the economics typical visitor versus the widget visitor. Slight changes in style of writing and different copy writing may be all you need.

If the copy must be the same, I would go with a different approach.

[EGOL]

Thanks to all for the great ideas and advice. It's really nice to get this kind of feedback from multiple pros.


Couple questions, I need clarification one:

Do you still have links to the widgets site on 1/2 your pages? Or did you take them off?

EGOL: There are only two links between the sites. One from the homepage of the economics site to the widgets site homepage. And one from an interior page to the homepage. That is all. There were a few dozen links in June, 2005 that had been in place for a couple of months but they have been removed. Both sites rank great at present. I can take these links down if recommended.


So you built a store on... a subdomain ...subdirectory ...back of an ice cream truck? :) Did you include links to the widgets site from store?

EGOL: The store is in a subdirectory. No links to the widgets site. Just the two links mentioned above.

[PaleSpyder]

EGOL,
Here is scary for you, currently we are hosting 25+ e-comm sites on the same class C and they are all in the same industry. I have tried to explain that we need them on their own seperate IP's with seperate registration information, but as the SEO, they implement about 5% of my suggestions ;) An example of what we do is

WidgetsRUs.com - main site with all widgets from all widget manufacturers.
FooWidgets.com - Site only carry's Foo Widgets.
BarWidgets.com - Site only carry's Bar Widgets.
PlunketWidgets.com - Site carries a certain type of widget from all manufacters.

So as you can see it is a matter of time before it is figured out and all is lost. If you have any advice for getting this through to people please share ;)

[Chance]

most ips now are addressed using cidr notation. Its classless.

http://infocenter.guardiandigital.com/manuals/IDDS/node9.html