Does selling the same products across multiple sites look spammy?

[onlinesource]

First, sorry for opening so many posts. I saw this topic - [webmasterworld.com...] - and wanted to reply to it. I can't.

That being said.

I manage multiple websites that each have their own unique selling approach, target audience, and prices. My question is, does Google see this as spammy?

I know often companies will maintain two websites for two particular subcategory of items. For instance, there may be a company that has one website for NBA apparel and another for NFL apparel. In my case, I would be referring to two (maybe three websites) that all sell NFL apparel. Is this bad?

Some people might ask, "Why have multiple sites in the first place?" Well, let's use the NFL apparel as an example. What if each site targets a specific demographic group? Is that spammy? Say one site is an upscale website with toll free support, live chat, and express shipping but ultimately higher prices and another has cheaper products but a much more striped down site with email support only and minimum shipping items. Both have unique layouts and colors and feel, the high end site feeling more professional and the low end site, feeling more value friendly but amateurish.

Others may say, "why not just tell visits to the cheap NFL site to visit your nicer NFL site? Market each site like an affiliate site and don't hide that you're related?". In most cases if I'm about to land a nice sale on the high end site, why would I want to introduce my low end alternative? What's stopping them from going to site-x and causing me to make less?

I know Matt has said in the past that as long as the layouts are unique, each site has different selling approaches, basically totally different... it might be OK. In my case it's the same products, maybe even same product names... so it isn't radically different. I would say that the product descriptions on both my sites are unique, but both sites are selling essentially a "Dallas Cowboys Men's XL T-Shirt" at different price points.

Also, what is causing Google to connect the dots on both these sites? Maybe that's for another thread?

In the end, I understand that when you own and operate multiple sites, the time and energy you spend on each site may suffer (since you can't put all your eggs in one basket) but there is good reason behind wanting to operate multiple sites and I'm trying to figure out how I can keep doing this without feeling punished or my results being "filtered" because of it.

[aakk9999]

From the approach you are taking, I think you should be ok if you have enough supporting content which has a different angle on each site. Personally, I would not even hide from Google that sites are related and have the same owner.

I fully understand why you want to do it and this is done all the time offline where the same item targets different end of the market.

[netmeg]

I dunno, I've had multiple clients attempt this over the years and I have come to believe it's a flawed business model (if you're counting on organic traffic) From Google's point of view, there's no reason at all to give both of these sites organic love, and at least one (and maybe both) will probably suffer for the attempt. If a client came to me now and asked me to consult on this kind of scenario, I'd probably turn him down.

I do have one client who has two nearly identical sites with nearly identical products, but one is targeted for the US and the other Canada (because there are various issues with currency, shipping and import that made it easier just to do two different sites) They both perform "okay" but I think they'd probably do better as one site if we could solve the logistics problems.

I have another client who is setting up a niche site with a subset of his products for a specific market. We're actually going to keep that one completely OUT of Google, and market it with other channels.

[Planet13]

"I know Matt has said in the past that as long as the layouts are unique, each site has different selling approaches, basically totally different... it might be OK."

I don't see where the selling approaches would be different.

Same stuff just costs more on one site than the other is all I see.

If the upscale site were offering something exclusive (like signed jerseys) that were unavailable on the lower-end site, then yeah that would be significant IMHO.

But will most of the customer service features you suggested (live chat, expedited shipping, toll free number) really e distinguishing enough to make google rank BOTH sites for the same products?

Granted, I am assuming you are planning on using google for your main source of traffic.

If on the other hand you plan on marketing your sites through ways OTHER than google, where you can be more granular in your targeting of different demographics, then it makes sense.

I think that your approach for two sites would work well if you were using Adwords Content Display Networks to generate traffic (where you have fine control over audience selection) instead of just organic.

But that's just me.