mirror sites

[colliecross]

Hello,

I would appreciate some advice please. I have 3 websites selling the exact same products (more or less) all under 3 different domain names and they each have a different design and style.

Could I be penalized by the search engines for this because they would class them as mirror sites?

[CarrieHill]

Hi Thanks for the question sorry for my tardy reply - I'm at SES NY and not getting to things as fast as I should.

If all 3 sites are selling the same product - you need to be absolutely sure the TEXT on each site is unique. Product descriptions cannot be the same on all 3 sites, rewrite them changing 70-80% of the content so the search engines dont consider 2 of the three duplicates.

If you host all 3 sites on the same server, do NOT link them together. If you must link them together, host them on 3 different servers - your hosting company can help you with this.

Hope this helps

~Carrie

[colliecross]

Thanks - that helped alot :)

[Reflection]

Hi,

If you have kept same content in meta elements ( title, keywords and description), then change them. It will be better if you keep unique meta elemnts and content for your three sites.

Then there will be no harm form search engine point of view.

[allstar784]

If all 3 sites are selling the same product - you need to be absolutely sure the TEXT on each site is unique. Product descriptions cannot be the same on all 3 sites, rewrite them changing 70-80% of the content so the search engines dont consider 2 of the three duplicates.

If you host all 3 sites on the same server, do NOT link them together. If you must link them together, host them on 3 different servers - your hosting company can help you with this.

Hope this helps

~Carrie

Just a few quick notes...if you're selling products which are popular among many e-commerce platforms a variance of 20-40% can be acceptable simply based on how many sites cover the market. Y

Best case scenario, rename the categories that the identical products sit in, as in most cases the product pages aren't indexed, however the category pages typically are in major search engines, primarily because of the content variation and the shortened url(s).

Also, as Carrie stated if you have them on the same server talk to your host, but the easiest way to keep from having to move your site is to ask if they can assign you a private IP. Many hosts will allow for a small assessed fee...just ensure that the IP's you're assigned are different class C IP's.

If you'd like, just PM me on how to check the C class prior to having an IP assigned.

Good luck!

[Reflection]

Changing IP address or hosting into three different serviers is a better option for you.

[grahm]

Ya content should be unique.

[Reflection]

Yes, content and meta elements should be unique.

[stevendennis]

ya content and description meta tag should be different for each site.

[Reflection]

Yes, by changing meta elements search engine crawlers think these are defferent sites with different informations.