Moving a site as a folder of existing one
-
We have the following case:
Site A with domain authority 65 and 2,750 linking root domains (139K total links) and
Site B with domain authority 68 and 1,336 linking root domains (38K total links)
There's a suggestion to move Site A as a folder of Site B so it becomes something like this: domainB.com/domainA using 301 redirects for the existing domain A. We'd like to better understand what such move will result in.
I imagine at first Site A will drop in rankings, but after that will it be better for it to be under Site B domain? Also, moving all the pages a step behind in the URL path may slightly affect their rankings.
What do you think? Would you move Site A or leave it as a separate domain? I understand there can't be an exact estimation what will happen, but I'll appreciate your thoughts.
-
I would redirect the brand site to the company site. I'd place it into a folder.
-
Thanks for your reply, Stephen.
Products on Site B get similar traffic volumes to Site A. The decision to split SiteAProduct and have it on a separate domain was made back in 2004 because of a partner relationship, which is no longer in place.
-
Hi
This sounds like you already have a model to use as Site B has product on it already.
What are the comparisons for similar products on Site B adn the Single Product Site A in terms of traffic.
I'm assuming that you have SiteB/ProductPages already so do you know why Site B/ProductPage is different from SiteA?
What was the strategic reason behind splitting off SiteAProduct?
I would make my decisions based on the answers to the questions above.
Hope that helps
Steve
-
Sorry for missing some details in my initial question.
Site B is the company site, while Site A is one of its product brands. There's no topic duplication and they don't compete for traffic. Site B gets 8-9 times the traffic of site A, as it contains other products as well. There's about 10% duplication in the linking root domains. Site A has over 55K pages, and site B has over 400K pages.
The team developing the site A product hopes that by moving the whole site to siteb/folder it will gain more authority, better ranking positions and more traffic overall.
-
Not enough information has been provided to make a decision.
How big are these sites?
If you place all of the content on the smaller site onto the larger site will there be topic duplication?
How much duplication is there in the linking root domains?
How much traffic do they get?
If these sites were on same topic, did not have duplicating content, had a huge diversity of different linking root domains and both ranked well in the SERPs, I would redirect the one with smaller traffic to the one with larger traffic and where content is topic duplicated I would rewrite/redirect to merge their strengths.
-
Pushing your SITEA content down one directory level to "SITE-B.com/SITE-A" will probably have an effect on ranking that content.
lower directory = less Importance
I tend to agree with kjay on combining the content.
Do the two sites compete for traffic?
-
Are these sites similar? Could you not combine the content and 301 each page as you combine the info into site B.
I would only considering combining the content and then 301'ing from site A to the combined page on site B if the site content is similar.
If the sites are of completely different content then leave them as separate sites.
HTH,
K
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google ranking content for phrases that don't exist on-page
I am experiencing an issue with negative keywords, but the “negative” keyword in question isn’t truly negative and is required within the content – the problem is that Google is ranking pages for inaccurate phrases that don’t exist on the page. To explain, this product page (as one of many examples) - https://www.scamblermusic.com/albums/royalty-free-rock-music/ - is optimised for “Royalty free rock music” and it gets a Moz grade of 100. “Royalty free” is the most accurate description of the music (I optimised for “royalty free” instead of “royalty-free” (including a hyphen) because of improved search volume), and there is just one reference to the term “copyrighted” towards the foot of the page – this term is relevant because I need to make the point that the music is licensed, not sold, and the licensee pays for the right to use the music but does not own it (as it remains copyrighted). It turns out however that I appear to need to treat “copyrighted” almost as a negative term because Google isn’t accurately ranking the content. Despite excellent optimisation for “Royalty free rock music” and only one single reference of “copyrighted” within the copy, I am seeing this page (and other album genres) wrongly rank for the following search terms: “free rock music”
On-Page Optimization | | JCN-SBWD
“Copyright free rock music"
“Uncopyrighted rock music”
“Non copyrighted rock music” I understand that pages might rank for “free rock music” because it is part of the “Royalty free rock music” optimisation, what I can’t get my head around is why the page (and similar product pages) are ranking for “Copyright free”, “Uncopyrighted music” and “Non copyrighted music”. “Uncopyrighted” and “Non copyrighted” don’t exist anywhere within the copy or source code – why would Google consider it helpful to rank a page for a search term that doesn’t exist as a complete phrase within the content? By the same logic the page should also wrongly rank for “Skylark rock music” or “Pretzel rock music” as the words “Skylark” and “Pretzel” also feature just once within the content and therefore should generate completely inaccurate results too. To me this demonstrates just how poor Google is when it comes to understanding relevant content and optimization - it's taking part of an optimized term and combining it with just one other single-use word and then inappropriately ranking the page for that completely made up phrase. It’s one thing to misinterpret one reference of the term “copyrighted” and something else entirely to rank a page for completely made up terms such as “Uncopyrighted” and “Non copyrighted”. It almost makes me think that I’ve got a better chance of accurately ranking content if I buy a goat, shove a cigar up its backside, and sacrifice it in the name of the great god Google! Any advice (about wrongly attributed negative keywords, not goat sacrifice ) would be most welcome.0 -
Positioning one site in two languages
Hi all, I have used the plugin wpml in order to have one site in different languages (Spanish and English). The problem is that this plugin doesn't work with all in one SEO plugin so that the spanish home and the english home have the same title. Google has positionated in the first position the english one in google.es. How can I revert the situation if I fix the problem with other plugin? Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | juanmiguelcr0 -
What precaution should we take to change the default page of the site
For some reason we wanted to change the default page of my site from example.com to example.com/default.aspx. We will be using 301 redirection to get the back link benefits. Do we need to make any changes in webmaster tool and sitemap too??
On-Page Optimization | | CyrilWilson0 -
Do Blog Comments On Your Site Help SEO?
There is a lot of debate as whether or not having comments on your blog is helpful from an SEO perspective. Proponents believe that more comments (1) creates more content, which search engines love, (2) creates more relevant keywords that can be searched, and (3) helps with "freshness" of the site/content leading to greater site authority. Others like Joost de Valk believe that comments can actually hurt SEO because keyword density cannot be controlled. He argues that his top SEO content are pages not posts for this very reason. What is your opinion?
On-Page Optimization | | marcperry0 -
How is my on-site SEO looking like?
I know this is a broad question. My site's content has been written more than one year ago and haven't been changed so far. Our main goal is to make the application hosted in the site work better every day, so we don't worry much about writing content. The URL is http://www.onlinelogomaker.com
On-Page Optimization | | rpedri0 -
Canonical Tag for Ecommerce Site
I implemented a canonical tag on each product page for my clients ecommerce site and my rankings tanked. Has this happened to anyone else? If so, when can I expect rank to return?
On-Page Optimization | | DynoSaur0 -
Best practice for franchise sites with duplicated content
I know that duplicated content is a touchy subject but I work with multiple franchise groups and each franchisee wants their own site, however, almost all of the sites use the same content. I want to make sure that Google sees each one of these sites as unique sites and does not penalize them for the following issues. All sites are hosted on the same server therefor the same IP address All sites use generally the same content across their product pages (which are very very important pages) *templated content approved by corporate Almost all sites have the same design (A few of the groups we work with have multiple design options) Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Again Aaron
On-Page Optimization | | Shipyard_Agency0 -
Best site structure for SEO
Hi, I'm currently in the process of redesigning/rebuilding a well ranking but a dated looking and structured website. Using analytics info I'm trying to put togerther an optimied site map plan for the site based on keywords. Currently the site is structured like this (a few examples) for some of its best ranking keywords / landing pages www.companyname.co.uk/frames/software/companyname-software/keyword/overview.php www.companyname.co.uk/frames/software/companyname-software/keyword/keyword.php I'd like to simplfy this as part of the re build so url's look like this www.companyname.co.uk/companyname-software/softwarecatogry/keyword Obviously I would 201 the old urls. My question is : A. is this a good idea? (From what I've read it is?) B. is there any benifit from having the company name repeated in the url (ie www.companyname.co.uk/companyname-software). My thinking before this is that companyname-software currently ranks well and brings a good amount of traffic. Or should I just go with www.companyname.co.uk/software/softwarecatogry/keyword as opposed to www.companyname.co.uk/companyname-software/softwarecatogry/keyword? Many thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | JamesJacobs0