Merging Domains
-
Hi, Everyone,
My company is currently working with a client that has multiple websites and is interested in merging them into one. One is a primary corporate site, the other is a site for a single line of products. They obviously want to merge the product site into the corporate site. The interesting thing is that the product site outperforms the corporate site. It has the highest traffic, and it has far more links/linking domains, a higher domain authority (although only by two points), and much more social activity. However, their reasons for wanting to merge the two are completely valid - less management, URL would match print collateral, etc.
They're asking our opinion on whether or not to move forward with the merger. I'm leaning toward no simply because of the fact that the site they want to merge is outperforming the other. I'm curious, though, to get some other opinions on this. Would a merger be worth the work in this case? Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!
-
Thanks for all of the helpful responses!
-
I would give them what they want, and inform them of the possible outcomes
More often than not (with proper redirects in place) the new page will rank on the same spot after a while.
It's a win win for them. They get what they want, they have 1 domain to worry about plus they have built a lot of links to the separate domains.
It's like the traditional ecommerce strategy: build separate product specific sites -> after building enough traffic -> 301 to category page of main domain. We all know it's harder to get natural links to category/product pages so that's what I would do.
gazzerman1's suggestion would be my next play if that doesn't get approved.
-
Another option is to host the same content on the main site and use the canonical tag on them. But the I would do as Devanur Rafi suggests, replicate the content on the new site and 301 redirect to the old pages. All the links gained will follow the 301 so the power will transfer over. I would leave the old site up permanently otherwise any links pointing to the old domain will be lost when the 301 redirect no longer exists. Another option is to go to webmaster or some other tool get a list of those links and contact the webmaster to let them know of the site move and to change the links to the new domain.
-
Hi friend, IMHO, you should go ahead with the merger as the idea is to have one stable and wide website. Moreover, all the SEO goodies of other websites will be inherited by the destination site within few weeks. Don't worry about the product site outperforming the main site. We did this twice in the past and came out with flying colors. Go ahead with a proper page-to-page 301 redirection for the merger and don't kill the product site for at least 6-7 months.
Please write back with more queries.
Best regards,
Devanur Rafi
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
-
Using one domain for email and another domain for your website, but redirects...
Hello - We are rebranding and our new name is fairly lengthy. We own all main domain versions of our brand name - .com, .new and .org - There is a very high search volume for the new brand name as it is a merger of 2 popular existing brands so want to take advantage of that and use our full name within our website domain name. However, since the name is a little long as mentioned - 25 characters - we also own the 3 character acronym of the new brand so we are debating on using the acronym for our new email addresses. ie name@abc.com so it is user friendly. We would obviously redirect the acronym email domain to point to the longer website domain. Are there any negative SEO effects if we do that? Use the longer domain for the website and shorter acronym for our email? Thank you
Technical SEO | | KRBishopBh1 -
Is there a tool out there to check any domain that might be pointing to my existing domain?
Is there a tool out there to check any domain that might be pointing to my existing domain?
Technical SEO | | adlev0 -
Goals for Sub Domain
I have created separate account for my sub domain and created goal for that, we have sales force data base to capture the leads.The problem which i'am facing is comparing to the goals and Sales force leads is very much difference.Goals leads are showing huge than sales force leads. 2) When lead is creating from organic source but in goals it's showing referral lead.
Technical SEO | | Anshul.S0 -
Local site under generic domain
Howdy Mozers, We have main website on .com domain and local websites for each language like .es, .fr, .in etc. We decided to move all local sites under main domain .com using subdirectories with gTLDs. One of the local sites has a manual penalty. Right now we are redirecting local site which have penalty using 302 redirect. So my question is. Will 302 redirect hurt our main site? Is there any other way to redirect visitors from local site without passing penalty? We have few thousands monthly users who are still using local domain links to get to our site, so we can't remove redirect at all. Best Regards,
Technical SEO | | juris_l
Juris0 -
Two domains, one unique design?
Hi Mozzers, There are lots of articles on using multiple domains for a company and we all know the story behind that. I have a different question though - I designed and built a really great WordPress theme for my company and it runs on xyz.com and has run on their for well over a year and has decent authority. I would now like to expand my business and offer a different service and I'd like to market the new service on abc.com My question is: If I use unique content on the second domain, but the same WordPress theme, will it have a negative SEO effect on either site? I should mention: I have my reasons for not just using the same domain for both services. I'd love to see what everyone thinks 🙂
Technical SEO | | ChristopherM0 -
Moving most (not all) content to another domain
Hi there, My company website has 3 main sections, two of those sections (each containing approx. 50 pages) will be moving to a separate website. The new website will also be owned by the same company. The new domain does not yet exist. I read this guide http://www.seomoz.org/blog/seo-guide-how-to-properly-move-domains , its very good, however it refers to moving the whole domain to a new URL. Are there any specific differences to consider in my situation for a partial move? Many thanks in advance! Nigel
Technical SEO | | Richard5550 -
Multiple domains on the same hosting
Hello, I have around 80 sites (different domains) which are on the same host. Everytime I look up the IP of these domains, it gives me the same IP. The sites are interlinked, all linking to the main domain. My question is: Does the off site link building have effect on the 80 sites?
Technical SEO | | Arianittt0 -
Selecting a new domain name
If a two word domain is already taken (e.g. onetwo.com), which of the following is a better alternative? 1. one-two.com 2. onetwo.org Best,
Technical SEO | | ChristopherGlaeser
Christopher0