Moving multiple Sites to One Site and SEO Impact/Ideas
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Hi there,
We are in the process of moving 2 sites with higher page authority to another site we own (that is our company brand), so essentially 3 sites into one.
We're at risk of losing a lot of SEO from the original 2 sites that have all the product information. We are doing this since we merged companies a couple years back and need one web precense.
Anyhow, the site launch date is in 3 months and the recommendation is to start moving content over prior to that for top pages, which is a big undertaking when we are launching all the pages again with new content, redeisgn and moving sites in 3 months. If it's the right move, we should do it, but I just wanted to get opinions on how others have handled something similiar when moving to a site with lower site authority and trying not to lose rankings.
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Nothing is guaranteed when you move domains. I see the following risks....
we are launching all the pages again with new content, redeisgn
Yikes! New content might not be received as enthusiastically by the search engines. It might not be received as enthusiastically by visitors and they will bounce - sending a bad signal to search engines. If this was my site I would keep the content and the internal linking among the pages the exact same as it is now. If the rewrite is not done in a way that preserves the visitor's pleasure your rankings might fall.
These original sites... if they are popular and have a lot of type in traffic, a lot of branded traffic, a lot of brand mentions, a lot of domain mentions, a lot of good will, a lot of navigational search, then you will be walking away from that. Rankings can be supported more by these signals than by links in many cases. No guarantees.
We are in the process of moving 2 sites with higher page authority to another site we own
I believe that (generally) best SEO practice is done when the strongest domain becomes the host of the content. It then has the ability to pass its authority and reputation into the content being moved there.
**What is the health of these other domains? **
If you can't say that these other sites have clean link profiles, healthy content profiles, etc. then merging them could have some risk. It might pay to check these things out before merging. You know the story about "one bad apple."
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As long as you implement the correct 301 redirects and keep your original domains live (redirected) you should have minimal impact on your rankings. You will start to see the new pages indexed and ranking in place of the old sites.
Be sure to bring over the content in it's entirety and link to the new page URLs going forward and correct other backlinks if possible.
Your lower authority site should receive a good boost with the redirects to it. Your overall traffic may take a hit in the short term, but merging properties of the same company and focusing your efforts on one site is a good idea in the long run.
Best of luck moving your sites.
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