2 sites same niche on same server, is this a big mistake?

Hi

we've recently had 2 websites built for our business. These are not little websites they are huge sites that a lot of time has gone into
they're both eCommerce and are in the same niche, they sell the same products.
the reason behind this is our main company has a shop where we spend time with customers, sales takes a bit of work
and we want to earn a nice bit of profit from every sale. We cant have cheap prices online because the people we spend time with will rightfully be annoyed its cheaper online

the second website is going to be for online sales only and we wont be associating our self with this website, any queries will be answered by email
we plan to give the maximum discount we can give allowed by manufacturers so we can do a lot of online sales and make profit based on the quick easy sales

The problem i have is both sites are built on magento and the developer built them so they share the same database
this means they have to be on the same server

the best we can do to have different ip's is
site 1 - 192.168.1.xx
site 2 - 192.168.1.xx

i want to rank both sites, the second site more so than the first
but the first has been running for 5years+

am i setting myself up to fail with both being on the same server, is this still a big issue in terms of ranking
is it essential to have a new database built for the 2nd site?
another option is to use a CDN, is this suitable?

i really need some help guys its taken far to long to get these sites done and now i've got this grief

really appreciate your opinions on this

thanks

I'd be more concerned about duplicate content. You could put one behind cloudflare which will give it a different IP address. You could probably put both on cloudflare. Google knows all about that so it likely won't cause issues.

Another option is to run your webserver(s) away from your database but I'd avoid that if they're going to be completely different locations.

Also, you could just set the sites up in separate locations using separate databases and run scrips to synchronize the databases. I'd go first option for simplicity.

In future though I'd plan first and execute later.

No I dont think its an issue at all. But as towelfox says duplicate content will be a potential issue so you need to take the time to differentiate the site in terms of product descriptions, images etc so that they appear to google as two independent sites.

same stupid question asked many time, I don't know why people don't like to search before they ask

I have had few sites on same hosting but not exactly on one keyword. So you should get some info about it

no, it's not a big deal. get back to work.

Take care of 2 things.

1. Don't link both sites to each other.

2. Their backlinks should be totally different and avoid getting link to both sites from same site. I mean if Site A is linking to your Site 1 then avoid getting link to your Site 2 from Site A.

HTH.

thanks everyone except papa_ji for some useful info

I had no idea the sites were being built on 1 database until they've been built i'm afraid, I'd rather have them separate.
Cloudfare sounds like the way to go then!


As for the duplicate Content

In the niche i'm in there's 100's of products all made by big brand manufacturers
Everyone sells the same products under the same names
What if on site 1 i had all 600 products
But site 2 i select a special few and show 250/600 products?

Also as for images could i just make the image slightly bigger / smaller but keep the resolution the same say
50 x 100 to 75 x 150
as everyone uses the same images given by the manufacturer

As for product names i'm a bit limited due to SEO
the product names tend to be like this, for example with "car" as the niche
KA Car
Golf Car
Fiesta Car
because thats what people are likely to search for.

Is there anything else i should make sure are completely different

things like the meta template will have to be different

thanks