To Clone or not to Clone?

[mmadore]

I am in the process of cloning my pretty successful e-commerce site. I'm almost ready to turn the clone on…but I am hesitant to flip the switch. Here’s the main reason why:

I have very, very good natural search ranking (on Site A.) for some of my best keywords. I’m afraid that the duplicated content on Site B will somehow hurt my natural rankings on Site A.

Is this a legitimate concern? I would hate (not a strong enough word) if my natural keyword search results were negatively effected by turning on a clone that has so much of the same content.

Creating new item descriptions and tags and rewriting content etc for thousands of items and dozens of articles doesn’t make sense from a time standpoint…does it?

Any thoughts…positive or negative on clones would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

Michael

[sunil.lukose]

From my understanding duplicate contents can hurt SEO. You can search on this topic and find various articles on this particular subject.

[cactus_jeanl]

Hi Michael,

Sunil is right that duplicate content can hurt your SEO. However, I'm not sure how exactly how it would effect site A. You would probably have a harder time getting site B to rank since site A is already established for the duplicate content and has more backlinks from other sources.

In any event, having unique content for each site would be the best bet to establish & keep good SEO for both sites. Perhaps you could start with your homepage & main category pages and work through the most critical areas first since the site is so large.

I found a great article about duplicate content posted today at Search Engine Guide that you might find helpful: Theories in Duplicate Content Penalties - Search Engine Guide Blog

[mmadore]

Thanks for the feedback. Good article too. Unfortunately for me I now have a brand new, fairly aggressive strategy that will take months to execute…but in order to protect Site A and its successful natural search results I believe I need to be disciplined and do the following...

Before the new site (clone) is live to the world, bots, engines, directories, etc:
• Site A and Site B will share only LIMITED content, products and articles
• Meta Tags will be completely different on index pages
• Any products/items shown on both sites will have unique urls, names, titles, prices and descriptions (a lot of spreadsheet work)
• Site A will continue to focus primarily on cremation urns (keywords: urns, cremation urns, burial urns, funeral urns, pet urns, and so on…) – While Site B will focus on true memorials (keywords: memorial rocks, headstones, memorial trees, burial markers, etc)
• Site B will offer a very limited line of cremation urns

Feel free to add any additional points or comment on any points listed here. Site A is my livelihood and I can’t afford to shoot myself in the foot by rushing the second site live. Even though the clone is “done” I think I need to pull its guts out as painful as it will be.

MM

[sunil.lukose]

It's hard to predcit the outcome of how search engines will react but as long as you are taking all the proper steps and aware of what needs to be done, I think you should be fine.

[cactus_jeanl]

I agree with Sunil that if you are aware of the issues at hand and take some time to work on individual content, you will be fine in the long run. I'm forwarding this threat over to our SEO team just in case they have any additional feedback for you!

[jeff.stolarcyk]

Hey Micheal,

Sunil and Jean have already given you some good advice. SEO and the Google algorithm have very few absolutes, but one of them is that fresh content is always preferable to clone content.

Just to put your mind at ease, duplicate content will not hurt site A's rankings.

As for your SEO strategy, it looks pretty solid, although it will be time consuming. In the end, it should be worth it. When it comes to meta tags, I'd make sure that all of the store's section pages have unique tags, not just the index.

I'm also of the opinion that product description content is the safest thing you can duplicate. If you have limited crossover between the two sites, it should be okay to stet the product descriptions and focus more on focus more on creating SEO-friendly content for the new store's section pages. Check out what keywords people looking for your business are using to find you, and try to use those words or phrases in your content.

If you have any other questions, let us know. Good luck!

[spytown]

the cloned site shoudl just have lets say some of your best sellers from site A. it should really be used to move out old inventory if you have any..discontinued pieces or specials that the manufacturers have provided to you, that you dont want to tarnish your A site with..Good luck..

[Kaleidoscope Karl]

Michael

I just cloned my sucessful site KALEIDOSCOPES TO YOU - 1000's of Kaleidoscopes In Stock - We Sell Kaleidoscopes & Marbles. to MARBLES TO YOU - 100's of Handmade Contemporary Art Glass Marbles In Stock - FREE UPS Ground Shipping on Orders Over $200.00 -Shop Online

I was concerned about many of the same things you were about rankings etc. I cloned in april of this year so the school session is still out. but over all i am happy I did clone. I am releived to find out site A s rankings will not be hurt by site Bs duplicate content. I have seen some good placement of the new site so in effect i am helping to stop up the first 10 spots in natural rankings with another one of my sites.

Karl

[beengel]

Is it duplicating site design and features then adding new products/content?