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
-
301 Multiple Sites to Main Site
Over the past couple years I had 3 sites that sold basically the same products and content. I later realized this had no value to my customers or Google so I 301 redirected Site 2 and Site 3 to my main site (Site 1). Of course this pushed a lot of page rank over to Site 1 and the site has been ranking great. About a week ago I moved my main site to a new eCommerce platform which required me to 301 redirect all the url's to the new platform url's which I did for all the main site links (Site 1). During this time I decided it was probably better off if I DID NOT 301 redirect all the links from the other 2 sites as well. I just didn't see the need as I figured Google realized at this point those sites were gone and I started fearing Google would get me for Page Rank munipulation for 301 redirecting 2 whole sites to my main site. Now I am getting over 1,000 404 crawl errors in GWT as Google can no longer find the URL's for Site 2 and Site 3. Plus my rankings have dropped substantially over the past week, part of which I know is from switching platforms. Question, did I make a mistake not 301 redirecting the url's from the old sites (Site 2 and Site 3) to my new ecommerce url's at Site 1?
Technical SEO | | SLINC0 -
Best way to present a single image from a gallery?
Hi. I want to make a page for each image on my clients gallery, so that each image page will be indexed and rank. (It's a tattoo portal and theres a lot of traffic on specific tattoos) But as the setup is for now, the only way it will be different from the other image pages, is the H1 title. Can you guys give some examples on "spot on" galleries SEO-wise, i could draw some ideas from?
Technical SEO | | MichaelRoscoe0 -
301 redirecting old content from one site to updated content on a different site
I have a client with two websites. Here are some details, sorry I can't be more specific! Their older site -- specific to one product -- has a very high DA and about 75K visits per month, 80% of which comes from search engines. Their newer site -- focused generally on the brand -- is their top priority. The content here is much better. The vast majority of visits are from referrals (mainly social channels and an email newsletter) and direct traffic. Search traffic is relatively low though. I really want to boost search traffic to site #2. And I'd like to piggy back off some of the search traffic from site #1. Here's my question: If a particular article on site #1 (that ranks very well) needs to be updated, what's the risk/reward of updating the content on site #2 instead and 301 redirecting the original post to the newer post on site #2? Part 2: There are dozens of posts on site #1 that can be improved and updated. Is there an extra risk (or diminishing returns) associated with doing this across many posts? Hope this makes sense. Thanks for your help!
Technical SEO | | djreich0 -
What is the best way to upload an image for SEO
I have a site that is largely based on images. It runs on Wordpress. Each page has about 10 images. What is the best way to upload images? As a WP gallery. As another gallery (with a gallery plugin) As seperate images uploaded via WP (it shows a thumbnail which is links to the larger image). That way each image can have a title. As seperate images uploaded via FTP in which case I would then make a thumbnail which will link to the larger image. This option would only be good if WP does not optomize the thumbnail images that it creates. As a text title which links to the image. Since most of my content is based on images and mostly comes from Google images I was wondering what the best method to use is.
Technical SEO | | nicolebd0 -
Site command
How reliable is site command? Is there any other way to check indexed pages.
Technical SEO | | gmk15670 -
Are article sites a good way to generate traffic and links
I read a lot that article sites are a great way to generate links and traffic but i would like to hear from people on here to see about their experience with article sites. I have tried article sites and i have to be honest that most of them are no follow links and have also not generate any traffic. I have written over 30 articles for free article sites with no traffic coming from them and this has been done over a eight month period can anyone recommend any good article sites that can produce traffic and also ones that produce do follow If you feel i am wasting my time putting articles on free sites then please do tell me
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
When launching a site redesign, what is the best way to roll it out?
We are currently working on a site re-design and are getting close to launch. When launching the newly designed site, what is the best way to roll it out? 301 Redirects with an under construction page? Just upload the entire site at once? or al little of both? Thank You
Technical SEO | | ControlByWeb0 -
Best way to display maintenence mode on a website?
I have a website with lots of traffic and sometimes the backends fail. I want to use lighttpd to show that the website is under mantenence and should be back up shortly. I was thinking of using Soft 503 errors or doing a 302 for every page to /maintenance.html. What would you do (besides fixing the backends, we are already doing that :P) to avoid hurting your SEO efforts? Thanks in advance Mariano
Technical SEO | | marianoSoler980