Merging Two Unrelated Sites into a Third Site
-
We have a new client interested in possibly merging 2 sites into one under the brand of a new parent company. Here's a breakdown of the scenario.....
BrandA.com sells a variety of B2B widget-services via their online store.
BrandB.com sells a variety of B2B thing-a-majig products and services (some of them large in size) not sold through an online store. These are sold more consultatively via a sales team.
The new parent company, BrandA-B.com is considering combining the two sites under the new brand parent company domain.
The Widget-services and Thing-A-Majigs have very little similarity or purchase crossover; so just because you're interested in one doesn't make you a good candidate for the other.
We feel pretty confident that we can round-up all the necessary pages and inbound links to do proper transitioning to a new, separate third domain though we're not in agreement that this is the best course of action. Currently the individual brand sites are fairly well known in their industry and each ranks fairly well for a variety of important terms though there is room for improvement and each site has good links with the exception of the new site which has considerably fewer.
BrandA.com DA = 73 - 19 years old
BrandB.com DA = 55 - 18 years old
BrandA-B.com DA = 40 - 1 year oldOur SEO team members have opinions on what the potential outcome(s) of this would be but are wondering what the community here thinks. Will the combining of the sites cause a dilution of the topics of the two sites and hurt rankings? Will the combining of the domain authority help one set part of the business but hurt the other? What do you think? What would you do?
-
If marketing/branding feels like they want all of them to be consolidated under the brand, I would go ahead and move forward, and just be sure to cover my typical site merger bases.
From my experience, it ends up happening at some point, so you might as well take advantage of the extra press, etc. that is likely happening from the merger to get it right as soon as possible.
-
But if you had a choice to merge or not merge the sites as we have outlined here would you or wouldn't you?
-
This is a common challenge for business during/after M&As... Especially when the acquisition is to bring on a new service/product that was previously not provided. A lot will hinge on the structure of the new site, and if it creates a clear user (and crawler) experience for these two separate facets of the new business.
I'm assuming you plan to create a homepage generally addressing the services/products of the company and providing users with the choice of going from the homepage to /brandatheme/ or /brandbtheme/ ... so you clearly differentiate the topics in the site structure, and can maintain the authority to their respective sections of the new site?
A consideration could be made to build the new site first, selectively canonical pages of the old sites for a transition period, and then doing the final redirecting... just so the change can be monitored.
I typically set an expectation to of potential short term losses, but net neutral over 6 months if the migration is done well.
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
-
Merging Two Sites: Need Help!
I have two existing e-commerce sites. The older one, is built on the Yahoo platform and had limitations as far as user experience. The new site is built on the Magento 2 platform. We are going to be using SLI search for our search and navigation on the new Magento platform. SLI wants us to 301 all of our categories to the hosted category pages they will create, that will have a URL structure akin to site.com/shop/category-name.html. The issue is: If I want to merge the two sites, I will have to do a 301 to the category pages of the new site, which will have 301s going to the category pages hosted by SLI. I hope this makes sense! The way I see it, I have two options: Do a 301 from the old domain to categories of the new domain, and have the new domain's categories 301 to the SLI categories; or, I can do my 301s directly to the SLI hosted category pages. The downside of #1 is that I will be doing two 301s, and I know I will lose more link juice as a result. The upside of #1, is that if decide not to use SLI in the future, it is one less thing to worry about. The downside of #2, is that I will be directing all the category pages from the old site to a site I do not ultimately control. I appreciate any feedback.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KH20171 -
Merging domains into sudomains
I know that questions about this topic have been asked before, but I didn't really find an answer that I could apply to our situation. We have several websites that now exist on separate domains, even though their topics are closely related. We are moving each of these sites into a new CMS and are considering collapsing all of the domains into a sub-domain structure around the strongest domain. Important to note: All of the current domains have existed for many years and have strong site authority, and regardless of the domain decision, in this restructuring we will be bringing them all under a global header. I know that there are SEO risks to moving a site from an established domain to a new one, even with 301 redirects in place, but the team in charge of this move wants to know how much of a hit we would take and how quickly natural search traffic might recover. Maybe and mights aren't really satisfying their questions... Does anyone have experience with collapsing domains into a sub-domain structure and feel like sharing your results? Most importantly, was it worth it???? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JuliaG0 -
Seo flash site
Hey. Would hear whether it is possible to SEO a website which is flash site cms?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Agger0 -
Two Sites Similar content?
I just started working at this company last month. We started to add new content to pages like http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/t/49/-/181/1137/Bridgestone-Motorcycle-Tires. This is their main site. Then i realized it also put the new content on their sister site http://www.jakewilson.com/t/52/-/343/1137/Bridgestone-Motorcycle-Tires. the first site is the main site and I think will get credit for the unique new content. The second one I do not think will get credit and will more than likely be counted as duplicate content. We are changing this so it will no longer be the same. However, I am curious to see ways people think we could fix this issues? Also is it effecting both sits for just the second one?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DoRM0 -
Redirection to mobile site
Calling all SEO ninjas! I'm currently developing single web pages for various clients which function as abbreviated versions of their main websites. They are all related & under a single domain. When a user visits these pages on a mobile device, CSS is used to display mobile friendly versions of these pages. My clients are thrilled with these mobile versions and now want to also redirect mobile visitors from their main site (which is not mobile optimised) to these pages. My questions are: Are there any negative implications if we did this? ie. redirecting to a different domain What is the best method for redirection? eg. JavaScript Can this be achieved by adding a single line of code to their main site Can this be done in an SEO friendly way so that the redirection acts like a backlink? Many thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | martyc0 -
Multiple sites in the same niche
Hi All A question regarding multiple sites in the same niche... If I have say 10 sites all targetting the same niche yet all on different C-class IPs with different hosts, registrars, whois data and ages can I use the same template, or will Google discern a pattern? Basically I have developed a WordPress template which I want to use on the sites albeit with different logos / brand colours. NB/ All of the 10 sites will have unique, original content and they will NOT be interlinked
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | danielparry1 -
Pages un-indexed in my site
My current website www.energyacuity.com has had most pages indexed for more than a year. However, I tried cache a few of the pages, and it looks the only one that is now indexed by Goggle is the homepage. Any thoughts on why this is happening?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | abernatj0 -
Migrating a site
Hello, I have what a I think it's a noob question.. I have a medium size website and need to put it into maintenance for the next 2 months, and afterwards activate a completly new site. My client asked me to do this, cause the same people whoe run the constant flow of information on the site, are the ones who are going to develop the new site, so he wants to just close it out So... what are the steps for doing this with minimum impact on any SEO advances made this past months?.. How do I tell the search engines, Hey, just under maintenance for a while....then... i'm back in the game but this is my new structure. and the old one should go here
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | daniel.alvarez0