Managing Multiple Sites in the Same Industry – Looking for Advanced SEO Advice

Hello everyone,

I would like to get some opinions on a situation we are experiencing while managing multiple websites within the same company.

We currently manage 4-5 websites, all owned by the same company. The domains are not new; most of them have been active for many years.

Over the last several months, we've been monitoring their SEO performance and noticed something interesting. Two of the websites have shown clear growth in rankings and organic visibility, while the others have remained relatively stagnant.

For the websites that improved, we did a few backlink campaigns in the past, but nothing aggressive or ongoing. Despite that, those sites experienced noticeable ranking improvements.

The other websites have received ongoing technical SEO and on-page optimization work, but the results have been much more limited. We are not seeing any major issues in Google Search Console, no manual actions, and no indexing problems.

From an on-page SEO perspective, we have already optimized title tags, meta descriptions, image alt attributes, heading structures, internal linking, and other standard technical SEO elements. We have not identified any obvious weaknesses there.

The industry we operate in is also quite niche, which creates another challenge. There are only so many topics we can realistically publish content about. Most new content consists of completed projects, case studies, product updates, references, and industry-related developments rather than an endless stream of blog content.

All websites are owned by the same company, and most of them are managed under the same Google Search Console account. However, since some of the best-performing websites are also under that same account, I doubt this alone would explain the differences in performance.

Another factor is that several of these websites target very similar products and services. Because of that, we often end up targeting the same or closely related keywords across multiple sites.

For example, in some search results we may see something like:

1. Our website
2. Competitor website
3. Another one of our websites
4. Competitor website
5. Competitor website

What makes this situation interesting is that we have not observed much SEO activity from the competitor recently. We do not see significant new content production, active link building, or major website changes. Yet the rankings remain remarkably stable over time.

This leads me to a few questions:

• Can multiple websites owned by the same company end up limiting each other's growth when targeting similar keywords?
• Does Google tend to restrict visibility when several websites from the same organization compete for the same search intent?
• Can historical authority and backlink strength alone keep a competitor ranking well even if they are not actively investing in SEO anymore?
• Is it normal for just a few backlink campaigns to create such a noticeable difference between websites?
• Could there be any SEO implications from managing multiple websites under the same Search Console account?

I would really appreciate hearing from anyone who has dealt with similar situations or has ideas on what areas we should investigate further.

Thank you.

No. Google Don't directly penalize websites that are owned by the same company. Google also hasn't directly indicated that sharing a Search Console account affect rankings. But when several of your sites target the same intent it can result in none of them becoming the real winner.

Regarding your sites that grew, it might be because of their backlink profiles history and previous seo campaigns.

Yes competitors can rank well with their authority that they build over time.

Q: Is it normal for just a few backlink campaigns to create such a noticeable difference between websites?
A : Yes. Small number of high-quality, relevant backlinks can have a much larger impact than months of on-page optimization, especially in niche industries.

Try to focus less on technical tweaks and more on whether each website has a distinct purpose, topical authority, good backlink quality. If you have multiple domains targeting same keywords and audience, try to give each website a different role.

For example, if you sell industrial machinery:

Site A = focuses on Product Category A
Site B = focuses on Product Category B
Site C = focuses on service, repairs, and maintenance
Site D = focuses on case studies, projects, and industry expertise

Make each website, best resource for specific audience in the same niche.

i am not sure if the 4-5 website are almost the same product or different product but if multiple sites are targeting the same keywords and search intent, there's a chance they're competing with each other. It may be worth giving each site a clearer focus and seeing whether that improves visibility over time and for better tracking you might want to use google analytics because i notice google console is not that accurate anymore like it used too.

yeah, multiple sites targeting the same keywords can absolutely cannibalize each other, especially if the content and intent overlap heavily. i wouldn't worry about them being in the same search console account, that's not the issue. the bigger factor is usually authority. a few strong backlink campaigns can create a gap that lasts for years, especially in niche industries where competitors aren't very active.

honestly, i'd look less at technical seo and more at topical differentiation. if all the sites are chasing the same searches, google will naturally favor the strongest version.