Redirecting Entire Microsite Content to Main Site Internal Pages?
-
I am currently working on improving site authority for a client site. The main site has significant authority, but I have learned that the company owns several other resource-focused microsites which are stagnant, but which have accrued significant page authority of their own (thought still less than the main site).
Realizing the fault in housing good content on a microsite rather than the main site, my thought is that I can redirect the content of the microsites to internal pages on the main site as a "Resources" section.
I am wondering a: if this is a good idea and b: the best way to transfer site authority from these microsites. I am also wondering how to organize the content and if, for example, an entire microsite domain (e.g. microsite.com) should in fact be redirected to internal resource pages (e.g. mainsite.com/resources).
Any input would be greatly appreciated!
-
Thank you for the tips and encouragement!
I feel a lot more confident about this project now, but if you could address one final question, I am still a little concerned about transfer of domain authority since one of the microsites gets top listings and nearly rivals the main site.
I realize domain authorities will by no means be combined, but I'm hoping the new inside pages don't lose so much page authority that they drop in the serps and, more importantly, that a significant impact can be made to the domain authority of the main site.
Basically, the main site is optimized and listing for our most valuable keywords and I'm hoping that the transfer of the microsite pages can provide a boost at the domain level.
Any insight would be much appreciated!
-
Sounds like you've got a good handle on your strategy, which to me seems sound.
Couple points of advice:
1. Make sure the microsites have a clean backlink profile. Use OSE or another tool to check for paid links, spammy article submissions, etc. You want to make sure not to transfer any bad links to your main site.
2. Do your best to 301 redirect individual URLs to specific URLs on your new site, keeping care to maintain the subject matter, content, structure, title tags etc. If these change too much, Google will interpret this as a change of subject, and you may lose any transferred authority.
3. Follow best practices for migrating domains.
Hope this helps. Sounds like your on the right track. Best of luck with your SEO!
-
If it is relevant to Sofas, you might be able to put it directly on that page. But yeah, having relevant content for each category makes sense for the user.
You can move the content over and the do 301 page-to-page redirects to the main site.
i.e
Sofas.com to furniture.com/sofas
contemporary sofas to furniture.com/contemporary-sofas
Good luck!
-
Thanks, what you've mentioned is basically my end goal. To answer your first question: the content on the microsites is mostly articles and informational content.
To build upon your furniture.com example: The main site is currently broken into relevant subfolders, but the informational content that should be there is living on the respective microsites. My goal is to move the microsite resource content such that content on sofas.com would be accessible from the main site via **furniture.com/sofas/resources **(for example).
An alternative could be to build an independent furniture.com/resources page and then build out subcategories from there. However, I think it is better UX to have the resources delivered relative to each category.
-
Thank you for the quick response. Each microsite is pretty comprehensive, so I think they would fit well as a single resources section or as independent resource sections within each main site product category.
However, each site is also branded differently, would there be any risks to avoid when changing design elements surrounding the text, titles, meta, etc?
*I should also note that some of the microsites do draw some rankings because of direct URL matches for some of our valuable keywords. That said, they contain good content that should be used to build authority for the main site. I am hoping redirecting won't hurt current listings too much, or that the authority boost gained from redirection will be more valuable than keyword listings for microsites.
-
BTW, have you thought about doing a 301 redirect to a relevant subfolder of the main site?
For example, the main site is furniture.com, microsite is sofas.com, you redirect sofas.com to furniture.com/sofas.html.
-
By content, are you talking about category and product descriptions? or articles, guides, etc.? Both?
-
I would definitely bring the content onto the main domain.
As far as how to structure the folders - it depends on the content. If it sits quite naturally as a stand alone section then a resources folder would make sense.
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
-
Should the canonical tag for the redirected pages be changed
Hi! Does anyone know if the canonical tag of the old redirected page should be changed, and include the URL of the new destination? Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | AnahitG0 -
Duplicate Content/Similar Pages
Hello, I'm working on our site and I'm coming into an issue with the duplicate content. Our company manufactures heavy-duty mobile lifts. We have two main lifts. They are the same, except for capacity. We want to keep the format similar and the owner of the company wants each lift to have its own dedicated page. Obviously, since the layout is the same and content is similar I'm getting the duplicate content issue. We also have a section of our accessories and a section of our parts. Each of these sections have individual pages for the accessory/part. Again, the pages are laid out in a similar fashion to keep the cohesiveness, and the content is different, however similar. Meaning different terminology, part numbers, stock numbers, etc., but the overall wording is similar. What can I do to combat these issues? I think our ratings are dropping due to the duplicate content.
Technical SEO | | slecinc0 -
Lots of links from a Wiki pointing at main site
Hi everyone This may seem a bit obvious but I am getting conflicting answers on this, we have a client that has a wiki that is basically an online manual of their software. They do it like this because the manual is so big and is constantly developing, there are thousands of pages with loads of links that are pointing to various sections of relevance on the main site as well, the majority of these are No Follow but I have noticed that they have a single link on the navigation that is a direct link to their main site that is a follow link, obviously this is a sitewide. Would this be seen as being detrimental to the main site, should I have this set as No Follow as well. Thanks in Advance
Technical SEO | | Andrew_Birkitt0 -
Is there any benefit in using a subdomain redirected to a single page?
For example if we have a domain www.bobshardware.com.au and we setup a subdomain sydneysupplies.bobshardware.com.au and then brisbanescrewdrivers.bobshardware.com.au and used those in ad campaigns. Each subdomain being redirected back to a single page such as bobshardware.com.au/brisbane-screw-drivers etc. Is there a benefit ? Cheers
Technical SEO | | techdesign0 -
How to verify a page-by-page level 301 redirect was done correctly?
Hello, I told some tech guys to do a page-by-page relevant 301 redirect (as talked about in Matt Cutts video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1lVPrYoBkA) when a company wanted to move to a new domain when their site was getting redesigned. I found out they did a 302 redirect on accident and had to fix that, so now I don't trust they did the page-by-page relevant redirect. I have a feeling they just redirected all of the pages on the old domain to the homepage of the new domain. How could I confirm this suspicion? I run the old domain through screaming frog and it only shows 1 URL - the homepage. Does that mean they took all of the pages on the old domain offline? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | EvolveCreative0 -
Should i redirect my lost links to my home page
Hi, as some of you maybe aware, i had a major problem last year that has caused me nothing but trouble. in short, my hosting company lost me over 10,000 pages from my site and i had to rebuild the site from stratch which is still on going. I lost thousands of links to my site and i have been over the past week pointing the pages not found to the sections that is best suited to them. But i am just wondering if it would harm my site if i also point some of those links to my home page. I was a page rank four before disaster happened to my site and now i am a page rank two and i want to build this up. so i am just wondering if i should point some of those good links to my home page i am redirecting the pages using 301 in my htaccess file any advice would be great
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Delete 301 redirected pages from server after redirect is in place?
Should I remove the redirected old pages from my site after the redirects are in place? Google is hating the redirects and we have tanked. I did over 50 redirects this week, consolidating content and making one great page our of 3-10 pages with very little content per page. But the old pages are still visible to google's bot. Also, I have not put a rel canonical to itself on the new pages. Is that necessary? Thanks! Jean
Technical SEO | | JeanYates0 -
Duplicate Content Issues - Should I build a new site?
I'm currently working on a site which is built using Zen Cart. The client also has another version which has the same products on it. The product descriptions and the vast majority of the text has been re-written. I've used the duplicate content tool and these are the results: HTML fingerprint: 0000a7ee1f07a131 0000a7ec1f07a931 92.31% Total HTML similarity: 76.33% Standard text similarity: 66.72% Smart text similarity: 45.81% Total text similarity 56.27% I considered using a different eCommerce system like Magento or Volusion. So I had a look at a few templates, chose one and then used the tool again and got the following: HTML fingerprint: 0000a7e41b012111 0000a7ec1f07a931 72.00% Total HTML similarity: 64.65% Standard text similarity: 11.69% Smart text similarity: 17.90% Total text similarity 14.80% Do you think its worth doing this? thanks Dan
Technical SEO | | TheYeti0