TLDR: Andrew Shotland, CEO of Local SEO Guide, recently appeared on the Voices of Search podcast to talk about domain cannibalization. You can watch the full episode here, as well as the synopsis below.
Having multiple domains can be tricky, and there are some pitfalls and questions you need to consider when managing them from an SEO perspective. As Andrew Shotland explains, “As SEOs, we spend most of our time trying to figure out what the problem is and doing it creatively. When working with corporate brands, not only do we need to consider how our own domains compete with each other, we also need to consider how search engines analyze them.” One of those concerns is about cannibalization of multiple domains, which can impact organic traffic for both websites .
Some of the topics covered in the podcast were:
- What is cannibalization of multiple domains?
- Common errors related to multiple domains
- How to fight multi-domain cannibalization?
- How to Get from Tanked to Ranking and an SEO First Aid Kit
Cannibalization of multiple domains defined
Multi-domain cannibalization occurs when brands set up multiple domains and try to target the same keyword or keyword groups. A good example of this is Yellow Pages companies that create listings of businesses with categories like “Houston restaurants.” They tend to reuse tons of data, so they might have one domain called coolyellowpages.com and another called coollocalbusiness.com, but both sites are basically the same. When this happens, it can cause SEO issues as Google has to figure out how to deal with those websites that have similar or the same content.
Common errors related to multiple domains
What we found is that many domains that repurpose their content and try to target the same terms tend to get less Google traffic. Not just one of the websites, but all domains tend to receive less organic traffic when multi-domain cannibalization occurs. And we’ve seen this with a variety of customers.
Many companies don’t consider this possibility when acquiring new websites, but Google can connect the dots. So it’s worth considering how to put together a strategy to avoid cannibalization when acquiring new websites or having multiple domains.
Ideally, your websites would rank #1 and #2 for the terms you are targeting. However, if you find that traffic is dropping, you should think about how to tell the two apart.
What we’ve seen is that sites like local business directories with the same 1000 listings are often hosted from the same IP address with the same codebase, so Google probably has a way of taking that into account and downgrading them.
How to fight multi-domain cannibalization?
To find out what problems you might be having, you need to use Google Search Console to run an analysis of all your domains. Ideally, you’ll create a dashboard so you can overlay it with Looker (formerly known as Google Data Studio) or a similar data visualization tool. Look for patterns that suggest they are moving in sync or in opposite directions to diagnose the problem.
If you want to find out if your brand is being penalized by Google in the face of a downtrend in industry traffic, first check the estimated rankings in semrush or ahrefs. If competitor traffic is going in the opposite direction or is stagnant while your site is down, then there is probably something wrong with your site.
Sometimes having the same business listings or pages in different locations is unavoidable. In this case, you can solve the cannibalization problem by canonicalizing all records for the domain you want to promote. This may have a negative SEO impact on the other site, but you can stop the bleeding on the first domain and stop them both from tanking further.
How to Get from Tanked to Ranking and an SEO First Aid Kit
Sometimes a major drop in a site’s SEO performance requires just a one-minute fix, while other instances will lead you down rabbit holes. Ultimately, how to reverse that performance begins with understanding how Google values your site and an obsessive curiosity to regularly diagnose and resolve the unexpected.
We have put together 7 Possibilities for diagnosing traffic breakdowns This will help you with some of the most common reasons why your organic traffic is faltering and quick methods to fix them.
