undefined
Skip to content
Moz logo Menu open Menu close
  • Products
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Pro Home
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Home
    • STAT
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Home
    • Compare SEO Products
    • Moz Data
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis
    • Keyword Explorer
    • Link Explorer
    • Competitive Research
    • MozBar
    • More Free SEO Tools
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
    • SEO Learning Center
    • Moz Academy
    • SEO Q&A
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • Case Studies
    • The Moz Story
    • New Releases
  • Log in
  • Log out
  • Products
    • Moz Pro

      Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

    • Moz Local

      Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

    • STAT

      SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

    • Moz API

      Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

    • Compare SEO Products

      See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

    • Moz Data

      Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis

      Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

    • Keyword Explorer

      Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

    • Link Explorer

      Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

    • Competitive Research

      Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

    • MozBar

      See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

    • More Free SEO Tools

      Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO

      The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

    • SEO Learning Center

      Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

    • On-Demand Webinars

      Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

    • How-To Guides

      Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

    • Moz Academy

      Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

    • MozCon

      Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
    Moz API

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

    Find your plan
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Small Business Solutions

      Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

    • Agency Solutions

      Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

    • Enterprise Solutions

      Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

    • The Moz Story

      Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

    • Case Studies

      Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

    • New Releases

      Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

    Surface actionable competitive intel
    New Feature

    Surface actionable competitive intel

    Learn More
  • Log in
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Dashboard
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Dashboard
    • Moz Academy
  • Avatar
    • Moz Home
    • Notifications
    • Account & Billing
    • Manage Users
    • Community Profile
    • My Q&A
    • My Videos
    • Log Out

The Moz Q&A Forum

  • Forum
  • Questions
  • Users
  • Ask the Community

Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

  1. Home
  2. SEO Tactics
  3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
  4. Merging Niche Site

Moz Q&A is closed.

After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

Merging Niche Site

Intermediate & Advanced SEO
4
4
955
Loading More Posts
  • Oldest to Newest
  • Newest to Oldest
  • Most Votes
Reply
  • Reply as question
Log in to reply
This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
  • inhouseseo
    inhouseseo last edited by Jun 19, 2015, 6:15 PM

    I posted a question about this a while ago, but still haven't pulled the trigger.

    I have a main site (bobsclothing.com). I also have a EM niche site (i.e shirtsmall.com).

    It would be more efficient for me to merge these site, because:

    • I would have to manage content, promos, etc. on a single site. In other words, I can focus efforts on 1 site. If I am writing content, I don't have to split the work.

    • I don't have to worry about duplicate content. Right now, if I enter a product URL into copyscape, the other sites is returned for many products.

    What makes me apprehensive are:

    • The niche site actually ranks for more keywords than the main site, although it has lower revenue. Slightly lower PA, and DA.

    • Niche site ranks top 20 for a profitable keyword that has about 1300 exact match searches. If you include the longer tail versions of the keyword it would be more.

    If I merge these sites, and do proper 301s (product to product, category to category) how likely is it that main site will still rank for that keyword?

    Am I likely to end up with a site that has stronger DA?

    Am I better off keeping the niche site and just focusing content efforts on the few keywords that it can rank well for?

    I appreciate any advice. If someone has done this, please share your experience.

    TIA

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • ClaytonJ
      ClaytonJ last edited by Jun 20, 2015, 2:21 AM Jun 20, 2015, 2:21 AM

      Folding or merging websites should be done when possible. The fact you are on this blog querying same shows that you are properly considering the implications of the fold. Take your time to do it right. Consider all options.

      A poorly executed fold can have sustained detrimental impact - seen it a few times when Bosses pull the trigger and demand speed & nothing else, no room for thought allowed. I would recommend drawing a site map of both sites and then considering the impact of the re-directs for each page - mapping/planning it out.

      I know this is about technical and the boys have that covered but also think about brand, mail outs, informing your data base. However you connect with the customers make sure you have that covered. The customer comes first.

      Finally on examples - we have done several mainly eCommerce sites where the blog has been a separate URL not even a sub-domain. None have gone backwards and a couple of them popped immediately after the fold. Ultimately great outcomes for all.  So I have confidence. Just make sure you are doing what you are doing now considering the unique aspects of your website and how you will capture those aspects in the fold.

      Good luck.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • randfish
        randfish @PatrickDelehanty last edited by Jun 19, 2015, 9:13 PM Jun 19, 2015, 9:13 PM

        Agree with Patrick - those resources should help and in general, I'd bias to merging the sites. You may even lose out short term, but long term, you'll almost certainly be better off focusing your efforts and energy, and earning the branding benefits of a single site and name.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
        • PatrickDelehanty
          PatrickDelehanty last edited by Jun 19, 2015, 6:30 PM Jun 19, 2015, 6:30 PM

          Hi there

          I wrote a pretty indepth answer for a similar question that you can read here.

          TL;DR - Rand also has a great Whiteboard Friday post on this subject called Should I Rebrand and Redirect My Site? Should I Consolidate Multiple Sites/Brands?

          Hope this helps! Good luck!

          randfish 1 Reply Last reply Jun 19, 2015, 9:13 PM Reply Quote 5
          • 1 / 1
          1 out of 4
          • First post
            1/4
            Last post

          Got a burning SEO question?

          Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


          Start my free trial


          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.

          • See all categories

          Related Questions

          • HellasSITES

            Site Migration - Pagination

            Hi, We are migrating our website and an issue we are facing is how to handle paginated content in our categories. Our new website will have the same structure but with different urls. Should we 301 redirect all the paginated content (if crawled by Google) to the url of the main category? To put this into an example: Old urls: www.example.com/technology/tvs      (main category of TVs & also page 1) ** www.example.com/technology/tvs?v=0&page=2 **    ( page 2 of TVs) New urls: **www.example.com/soundvision/tvs     **(main category of TVs & also page 1) **www.example.com/soundvision/tvs?page=2       **(page 2 of tvs) Should we redirect  all of the old TV urls (also the paginated) to www.example.com/soundvision/tvs ? The is no rel next, prev tag in our site and no canonicals. Also there is a view all products page in each category, BUT it doesn't contain all the products(max. is 100 per page - yes the view all page is also paginated). The same view all products page (paginated) will exist in the new website also. I checked google search console, and Google has decided to treat as canonical page the first page www.example.com/technology/tvs . Also, all the organic traffic of our categories goes to these pages (main category page - 1st page). I would appreciate any thoughts on this.

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | May 22, 2019, 11:24 AM | HellasSITES
            0
          • lara_dar

            Merging Sites: Will redirecting the old homepage to an internal page on the new site cause issues?

            I've ended up with two sites which have similar content (but not duplicate) and target similar keywords, rather than trying to maintain two sites I would like to merge the sites together. The old site is more of a traditional niche site and targets a particular set of keywords on its homepage, the new site is more of an authority site with a magazine type homepage and targets the same set of keywords from an internal page. My question is: Should I redirect the old site's homepage to the relevant internal page on the new website...
            ...or should I redirect the old site's homepage to the new site's homepage? (the old site's homepage backlinks are a mixture of partial match keyword anchor text, naked URLs and branded anchor text) I am in two minds (a & b!) (a) Redirecting to the internal page would be great for ranking as there are some decent backlinks and the content is similar (b) But usually when you do a 301 redirect the homepage usually directs to the new homepage and some of the old site's links are related to the domain rather than the keyword (e.g. http://www.site.com) and some people will be looking for the site's homepage. What do you think? Your help is much appreciated (and hope this makes sense...!)

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jul 30, 2013, 9:40 AM | lara_dar
            0
          • SEOTGT

            301 or 302 Redirects to Mobile Site

            When it's detected that a mobile device is accessing the site it has the ability to redirect from www.example.com to m.example.com. Does it make more sense to employ a 301 or 302 redirect here? Google says a 301 but does not explain why (although usually I stick to "when in doubt, 301") . It seems like a 302 would prevent passing link juice to the mobile site and having mobile-optimized results also showing up in Google's index. What is the preference here?

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Oct 9, 2012, 3:01 AM | SEOTGT
            0
          • essdee

            Merging Domains... Sub-domains, Directories or Seperate Sites?

            Hello! I am hoping you can help me decide the best path to take here... A little background: I'm moving to a new company that has three old domains (the oldest is 10 years old), which get a lot of traffic from their e-letters. Until recently they have not cared about SEO. So the websites have some structural, coding, URL and other issues. The sites are indexed, but have a problem getting crawled and/or indexed for new content - haven't delved into this yet but am certain I will be able to fix any of these issues. These three domains are PR4, PR4, PR5 and contain hundreds of unique articles. Here's the question... They want to move these three sites **to their main company site (PR4) and create sub domains for each one. ** I am wondering if this is a good idea or not. I have merged sites before (creating categories and/or directories) and the end result is that the ONE big site, is much for effective than TWO smaller, less authoritative sites. But the sub domain idea is something I am unsure about from an SEO perspective. Should we do this with sub domains? Or do you think we should keep the sites separate? How do Panda and Penguin play into this? Thanks in advance for the help! SD P.S. I'm not a huge advocate in using PR as a measurement tool, but since I can't reveal the actual domains, I figured I would list it as a reference point.

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Aug 27, 2012, 11:14 AM | essdee
            0
          • Creode

            Duplicate content on ecommerce sites

            duplicate content

            I just want to confirm something about duplicate content. On an eCommerce site, if the meta-titles, meta-descriptions and product descriptions are all unique, yet a big chunk at the bottom (featuring "why buy with us" etc) is copied across all product pages, would each page be penalised, or not indexed, for duplicate content? Does the whole page need to be a duplicate to be worried about this, or would this large chunk of text, bigger than the product description, have an effect on the page. If this would be a problem, what are some ways around it? Because the content is quite powerful, and is relavent to all products... Cheers,

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jul 1, 2024, 9:51 AM | Creode
            0
          • MSWD

            Splitting a Site into Two Sites for SEO Purposes

            I have a client that owns a business that really could be easily divided into two separate business in terms of SEO.  Right now his web site covers both divisions of his business. He gets about 5500 visitors a month.  The majority go to one part of his business and around 600 each month go to the other. So about 11% I'm considering breaking off this 11% and putting it on an entirely different domain name.  I think I could rank better for this 11%.  The site would only be SEO'd for this particular division of the company.  The keywords would not be in competition with each other. I would of course link the two web sites and watch that I don't run into any duplicate content issues. I worry about placing the redirects from the pages that I remove to the new pages.  I know Google is not a fan of redirects.  Then I also worry about the eventual drop in traffic to the main site now.  How big of a factor is traffic in rankings? Other challenges include that the business services 4 major metropolitan areas. Would you do this?  Have you done this?  How did it work? Any suggestions?

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Oct 15, 2015, 5:04 PM | MSWD
            0
          • AWCthreads

            How To Best Close An eCommerce Site?

            We're closing down one of our eCommerce sites. What is the best approach to do this? The site has a modest link profile (a young site). It does have a run of site link to the parent site. It also has a couple hundred email subscribers and established accounts. Is there a gradual way to do this? How do I treat the subscribers and account holders? The impact won't be great, but I want to minimize collateral damage as much as possible. Thanks.

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jan 13, 2012, 9:05 PM | AWCthreads
            0
          • CMTM

            Subdomains for niche related keywords

            I wanted to know how efficient using a subdomain is, taking in consideration all the updates Google has made lately. I am looking to use a subdomain for a well branded website for a niche specific part of their website. The subdomain will end-up having more than 100 pages. I'd like to see in what cases do you guys recommend using a subdomain? How to get the same benefit out of a subdomain as i am getting from the actual main domain?

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Mar 31, 2011, 3:29 PM | CMTM
            0

          Get started with Moz Pro!

          Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

          Start my free trial
          Products
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Local
          • Moz API
          • Moz Data
          • STAT
          • Product Updates
          Moz Solutions
          • SMB Solutions
          • Agency Solutions
          • Enterprise Solutions
          Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Authority Checker
          • Link Explorer
          • Keyword Explorer
          • Competitive Research
          • Brand Authority Checker
          • Local Citation Checker
          • MozBar Extension
          • MozCast
          Resources
          • Blog
          • SEO Learning Center
          • Help Hub
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
          • How-to Guides
          • Moz Academy
          • API Docs
          About Moz
          • About
          • Team
          • Careers
          • Contact
          Why Moz
          • Case Studies
          • Testimonials
          Get Involved
          • Become an Affiliate
          • MozCon
          • Webinars
          • Practical Marketer Series
          • MozPod
          Connect with us

          Contact the Help team

          Join our newsletter
          Moz logo
          © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
          • Accessibility
          • Terms of Use
          • Privacy

          Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.