Merging two sites into a new one: best way?
-
Hi,
I have one small blog on a specific niche and let's call it firstsite.com (.com extension) and it's hosted on my server.
I am going to takeover a second blog on same niche but with lots more links, posts, authority and traffic. But it his on a .info domain and let's call it secondsite.info and for now it's on a different server.
I have a third domain .com where I would like join both blogs. Domain is better and reflects niche better and let's call it thirdsite.com
How should I proceed to have the best result?
I was thinking of creating a new account at my server with domain thirdsite.com
After that upload all content from secondsite.info and go to google webmaster to let they know that site now sits on a new domain. Also do a full 301 redirect. Should it be page by page or just one 301 redirect?
And finally insert posts (they are not many) from firstsite.com on thirdsite.com and do specific redirects. Is this a good option?
Or should I first move secondsite.info to my server and keep updating it and only a few weeks later make transition to thirdsite.com?
I am worried that it could be too much changes at once.
-
You will lose some link authority that comes with 301 redirects but if the new domain is worth the branding and potential gain of future backlinks, you should go for it.
As BeardoCo said, you need to replicate/recreate the posts from the first two sites onto the third and have individual, page specific redirects set up. This would conserve as much relevancy and link authority as possible.
Also take note that your traffic will most likely tank for 2 weeks while G deals with the site transition. Don't panic, rankings will return within 3 weeks.
Make sure you tell google you changed domains and set up 301 redirects as soon as you do that. Otherwise, you can get hit with a penalty for creating too many pages too quickly + content is duplicate from the other two sites.
Good luck!
-
Thanks for replying.
I would not redirect secondsite.info to homepage. I would maintain all urls so I would be just moving site to a new domain keeping all urls active. On the firstsite.com I would do redirect on each post to new post created on thirdsite.com.
And homepage of firstsite.com to thirdsite.com. But I am worried that this could hurt rankings.
-
I would take the new sites and recreate the posts with identical information. I would then redirect each old website posts permanently to the new posts on the new website. I think you would lose a lot of link juice if you were just to redirect to a homepage.
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
-
Page Speed or Site Speed which one does Google considered a ranking signal
I've read many threads online which proves that website speed is a ranking factor. There's a friend whose website scores 44 (slow metric score) on Google Pagespeed Insights. Despite that his website is slow, he outranks me on Google search results. It confuses me that I optimized my website for speed, but my competitor's slow site outperforms me. On Six9ja.com, I did amazing work by getting my target score which is 100 (fast metric score) on Google Pagespeed Insights. Coming to my Google search console tool, they have shown that some of my pages have average scores, while some have slow scores. Google search console tool proves me wrong that none of my pages are fast. Then where did the fast metrics went? Could it be because I added three Adsense Javascript code to all my blog posts? If so, that means that Adsense code is slowing website speed performance despite having an async tag. I tested my blog post speed and I understand that my page speed reduced by 48 due to the 3 Adsense javascript codes added to it. I got 62 (Average metric score). Now, my site speed is=100, then my page speed=62 Does this mean that Google considers page speed rather than site speed as a ranking factor? Screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/YSxSwOG Regarding: https://etcnaija.com
Technical SEO | | etcna0 -
Two websites, one company, one physical address - how to make the best of it in terms of local visibility?
Hello! I have one company which will be operating in two markets, printing and website design / development. I’m planning on building two websites, each for every market. But I’m a bit confused about how to optimize these websites locally. My thought is to use my physical address for one website (build citations, get listed in directories, etc. ) and PO Box for another. Do you think there is a better idea?
Technical SEO | | VELV1 -
Test site got indexed in Google - What's the best way of getting the pages removed from the SERP's?
Hi Mozzers, I'd like your feedback on the following: the test/development domain where our sitebuilder works on got indexed, despite all warnings and advice. The content on these pages is in active use by our new site. Thus to prevent duplicate content penalties we have put a noindex in our robots.txt. However off course the pages are currently visible in the SERP's. What's the best way of dealing with this? I did not find related questions although I think this is a mistake that is often made. Perhaps the answer will also be relevant for others beside me. Thank you in advance, greetings, Folko
Technical SEO | | Yarden_Uitvaartorganisatie0 -
Switching site from http to https. Should I do entire site?
Good morning, As many of you have read, Google seems to have confirmed that they will give a small boost to sites with SSL certificates this morning. So my question is, does that mean we have to switch our entire site to https? Even simple information pages and blog posts? Or will we get credit for the https boost as long as the sensitive parts of our site have it? Anybody know? Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | rayvensoft1 -
Redirecting a single page on a separate domain to a new site?
My client started a subdivision of their company, along with a new website. There was already an individual page about the new product/topic on the main site, but recognizing a growth area they wanted to devote an entire site to the product/topic. Can we/should we redirect that page on the old corporate/main site to the new domain, or just place a link or two? Thoughts?
Technical SEO | | VTDesignWorks0 -
Site Navigation
Hello, I have some questions about best practices with site navigation & internal linking. I'm currently assisting aplossoftware.com with its navigation. The site has about 200 pages total. They currently have a very sparse header with a lot of links in the footer. The three most important keywords they want to rank for are nonprofit accounting software, church accounting software and file 990 online. 1. What are your thoughts about including a drop down menu in the header for the different products? (they have 3 main products). This would allow us to include a few more links in the header and give more real estate to include full keywords in anchor text. 2. They have a good blog with content that gets regularly updated. Currently it's linked in the footer and gets a tiny amount of visits. What are your thoughts about including it as a link in the header instead? 3. What are best practices with using (or not using) no follow with site navigation and footer links? How about with links to social media pages like Facebook/Twitter? Any other thoughts/ideas about the site navigation for this site (www.aplossoftware.com) would be much appreciated. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | stageagent0 -
What's the best way to transplant a blogger blog to another domain?
So I have this client who's got a killer blogger blog—tons of inbound links, great content, etc. He wants to move it onto his new website. Correct me if I'm wrong, but there isn't a single way to 301 the darn thing. I can do meta refresh and/or JavaScript redirects, but those won't transfer link juice, right? Is there a best practice here? I've considered truncating each post and adding a followed "continue reading…" link, which would of course link to the full post on the client's new site. It would take a while and I'm wondering if it would be worth it, and/or if there are any better ideas out there. Sock it to me.
Technical SEO | | TheEspresseo0 -
Switching ecommerce CMS's - Best Way to write URL 301's and sub pages?
Hey guys, What a headache i've been going through the last few days trying to make sure my upcoming move is near-perfect. Right now all my urls are written like this /page-name (all lowercase, exact, no forward slash at end). In the new CMS they will be written like this: /Page-Name/ (with the forward slash at the end). When I generate an XML sitemap in the new ecomm CMS internally it lists the category pages with a forward slash at the end, just like they show up through out the CMS. This seems sloppy to me, but I have no control over it. Is this OK for SEO? I'm worried my PR 4, well built ecommerce website is going to lose value to small (but potentially large) errors like this. If this is indeed not good practice, is there a resource about not using the forward slash at the end of URLS in sitemaps i can present to the community at the platform? They are usually real quick to make fixes if something is not up to standards. Thanks in advance, -First Time Ecommerce Platform Transition Guy
Technical SEO | | Hyrule0