Long time since I've been here but I wanted to run a technical question pass a few of you guys and get your opinion.

I have had two sites for over 6 years when I took them over they were mirror sites and of course one of them had never shown up in the serps. The other has enjoyed great rankings for years and still continues to do well. As I have learned more and had the time I started placing unique content into both sites making them more and more different. The reason for two sites in the first place is because they are real estate sites and we cover 5 counties in two states.

So the long and short of it is now the SERPS are liking my Georgia Site and it too is climbing into number one spots First Place Rankings: 17 this week with 96 in the Top 10:

So here is my question I have always listed and built pages for both my NC and Ga listings in both sites. What I would like to do is start having the listing pages just on the State site that the property is in. In other words if the listing is in Hiawassee Georgia then the pages will be found on the Georgia site and on the North Carolina site I would have my pricing page with a thumbnail photo and description but when someone clicks on the link to get to the detail page it would take them to my Georgia site. Thus making the sites even more unique of themselves but it would be increasing the cross links to both sites back and forth tremendously maybe by about 30 to 60 cross links per site. Which could climb to over 100 or more cross links each.

Here is an example I have already done scroll to the second listing
A True Mountain Experience

For now I still have a "Hayesville North Carolina" page on my Georgia site which is identical to the one on the NC site. I want to delete the towns off the opposite states sites and cross link those too.

So here is my question. Is that going to help or hurt my sites?

The way I see it, is that it is the right way to do it not only ending any duplication but orginizing everything by the state..... but will the SE's see it that way? Another concernis confusing my clients as they go back and forth into two sites. Plus I'm still torn if it's best to open these links in a new window or not.

Anybody make any since out of my gibberish? Any advice or should I just count my blessings and just add more community pages to each site and not do too much cross links. How many are too many?

Thanks in advance Sward

It sounds like you want to offer identicle listings on both sites right? If so then what you should do is have the one site (The more successful one) have the listings static, and then on the other site you can use an iframe to show the listings, then the SE's wont spider that content but you can still write unique content for those pages.

The code if you arent familiar with inserting iframes is

<iframe src="wherever your listings page is"
width="whatever" height="whatever" frameborder="whatever"> I'm sorry but your browser doesn't support the IFRAME element.</iframe>

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was that even close to what you were asking about?

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Well sort of. What I want is both sites to rank. And now as of this week I just check and my Georgia site is climbing. Total: 153 placements over 30 with 25 SE checked. Doesn't sound like much but it is being seen.

See I'd like to use different keywords for each site so I want both to rank. My main question is ...is there a problem with many cross links between two sites? On different servers ( they have the same national host but I assume they are far enough apart to be considered separate)

What I really want is to have the Georgia site rank high for Hiawassee and my North Carolina site to rank high for Hayesville. Right now I have both words targeted for my NC site since MY ga site was not ranking. I would like to remove that keyword from my NC site and just have those pages and keyword on my Ga site. However I still want to offer access to the information from both sites and the easiest way for me is a direct link

The same with my listings. Most people start looking for Mountain property and don't really have a preference of location they just think in their minds one state or the other and it doesn't seem to register with them that the states share a huge recreational lake and the two towns are only 10 minutes away from each other.

As far as coding if it's server side stuff I doubt I can do it. I'm still on a windows 2000 server (I believe.) I can do Cold Fusion and CGI with it but I hate CGI (too hard for me) and only know simple cold fusion. The rest is over my head.

Sward

The answer is yes to much interlinking between 2 sites is a bad idea, G will be asking you "why isnt this just one site" Therefore my suggestion would be best. If you are on site A and you want to offer some content "On site A" from "site B" then you would do it as an Iframe link as opposed to a regular one, your other option is thanks to the new implementation of rel="nofollow" you could put that attribute on all interlinkings that way you can show you are only doing it for your users benefit, and not trying to artificially inflate your link pop.

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Oh yeah, one benefit of the iframe is that you dont have to make the user leave your site in order to view info from another site. That way they dont feel like they are being bounced from domain to domain, I would be happy to code a page for you as an example for you to follow, you will see that iframing is VERY easy. Let me know if you would like some help (It isnt serverside, just a piece of code that goes into your html)

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Wow would you do that? Yeah That would be great if I had an example to follow I'm sure I could figure it out. That is how I learned Cold Fusion. I guess that would be best then. I really really appreciate it!

How much linking would you guess is considered too much? I mean if I had one link per major page (about 30 pages ) back to the other website would that be too much? How about 10? I'm big on ease of navigation so this was sort of bothering me. Like I said it's been going well just duplicating the pages on both sites but I want to play fair, not get banned and make it easy on my clients too. You're the best SEO guy!
Sward

Hi ,
I'm ready for that iframe code if you have a minute to send me an example that'd be great! Now would that be better then just putting the pages in my Robot text? ( That could be time consuming)

Again what I am trying to do is allow access to individual property pages from both sites but just have them indexed in the state the listing actually is in.

Thanks in advance!
sward

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