Hi everyone, I am currently doing SEO for a jewelry company who has two sites, Kranichs.com and SussexJewelers.com. Kranichs.com is doing well. Sussex, however, is not. Here are the basic stats: Domain: SussexJewelers.com *IP: 69.20.52.157 *PR: 0 *Yahoo Links: 5,590 Domain: Kranichs.com *IP: 69.20.52.151 *PR: 3 * Yahoo Links: 6,110 I have a few questions: • How much do you think it hurts Sussex to be hosted on the same class C IP block? • Do you think their is a duplicate content penalty for one or both of the two sites (if, say, both are selling the same pair of diamond rings?) • Would you recommend hosting Sussex on a different server to limit potential SE penalties? • Why do you believe the PR of Sussex is so low when it has been around for one year, and has 5590 Yahoo Links? What would you recommend to raise PR? Thanks for any advice you can offer.
I believe you should host Sussex on another server. If these two sites have duplicate content and are linked together, that spells trouble. From what I am reading into your post, Kranichs has been around longer. So search engines are going to recognize they're content to be the original and any duplicate content you could be being penalized. Now if they are both just selling the same items but the pages read different, then you should be fine. Of those 5590 links, how many are quality backlinks? How many outbound links do you have? Have you crossed your "I's" and dotted your "T's" on you on page optimization? All of these are factors in PR. I would suggest finding strong backlinks. That is always a good starting point for PR.
I don't think there would be any duplicate content issues between those two site so don't be changing hosts or you'll be disappointed. Try running this program to compare the two sites. http://www.reviewmyweb.com/