Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Merge 2 websites into one, using a non-existing, new domain.
-
I need to merge https://www.WebsiteA.com and https://www.WebsiteB.com to a fresh new domain (with no content) https://www.WebsiteC.com. I want to do it the best way to keep existing SEO juice.
Website A is the companies home page and built with Wordpress
Website B is the company product page and built with Wordpress
Website C will be the new site containing both website A and B, utilizing Wordpress also.
What is the best way to do this? I have research a lot and keep hitting walls on how to do it.
It's a little trickier because it's two different domains going to a brand new domain.
Thanks
-
Thanks Andy!
I'm still a little confused on how I will be copying data over from Site A to Site C. Is it just a matter of creating an empty Wordpress shell with no template and copying the data from Site A to it? (And how is that usually done?) Then would I redirect all Site A's pages to Site C's pages, just with the URL changed? I.E www.SiteA.com/large-dogs redirect to www.SiteC.com/large-dogs
I don't want all of Site B either, just about 10 pages from it, would I manually copy them over also, and how would that be done?
Thanks
-
I did just this type of thing a little over a year ago and organic traffic is up over 300% now. We made the change mainly to improve the structure of the website(s), with more logical organization and better internal linking. We did do the move all at once (thousands of pages) but it took a lot of behind-the scenes planning to be ready for that.
First came the decisions about what sections and categories made sense for our site. (Using the URL structure to guide users around the site makes it easier for them to find what they are looking for and interlinking between related posts as appropriate is also good—and this helps a lot with search engines.)
Then came the organization of posts into their new categories. To make things easier, we kept the individual path names the same (so www.siteA.com/old-category/old-post-string became www.siteC.com/new category/old-post-string) and uploaded them into their new categories when the time came.
We also used this time to do a limited content review (posts with the most traffic) and we updated a lot of these. We made the choice to keep most of our old posts, even though in our market they can get outdated quickly, to conserve any links we may have acquired. (The main site that we were directing to the new site was pretty old and had picked up a lot of links over time.)
We could have done a more complete content review before the changeover, but in part we wanted to see how these posts did under the new structure—we did get renewed life out of some of them, and we further updated and optimized those.
In conjunction with the export of the old sites to the new one, we made sure to 301 redirect all of the old posts to their counterparts on the new site. For the posts we chose not to bring over, we 301 redirected them to a related post in the same category.
We still occasionally come across things that need to be fixed—old posts that need redirecting/updating or 404 errors that need to be tracked down (one big issue we found was a lot of old pages had old links with hard paths to the old website root domains, causing a bunch of nasty internal not found errors—not good!) but overall we are happy with the change. (Up 308%!)
-
Hi,
One way to do this is to decide which site is going to be the main site (site A) sat on C and copy this data over. If you are bringing in site B, then this can sit at another structure level - you will end up with this...
Site A --> Site C, main pages
Site B --> Site C, product pagesThat then brings in everything from both sites to the new domain.
You then want to redirect both of the old sites to the new one, but don't redirect everything to the root. That isn't a good use of 301 mapping. You need to be mapping on a page level so that you will see...
www.sitea.com/about us -301- www.sitec.com/aboutus
www.siteb.com/newproducts/hammers -301- www.sitec.com/newproducts/hammersThere can be differences in the URL's - you don't need to stick with the same structure as the other sites if it doesn't make sense, but always map pages to something very similar.
Page level is the only way to go if you want to maintain a seamless transition for users as well.
Also, don't expect to hit a switch and do this all at once. You can do this over a period of time because to the user, they will just be redirected to the new pages. You will retain more link juice like this.
This is quite a lengthy process and I am sure I have missed the in-between bits, but this is the basis of what you want to be doing.
Others might chip in with other suggestions for you.
-Andy
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
-
GoogleBot still crawling HTTP/1.1 years after website moved to HTTP/2
Whole website moved to https://www. HTTP/2 version 3 years ago. When we review log files, it is clear that - for the home page - GoogleBot continues to only access via HTTP/1.1 protocol Robots file is correct (simply allowing all and referring to https://www. sitemap Sitemap is referencing https://www. pages including homepage Hosting provider has confirmed server is correctly configured to support HTTP/2 and provided evidence of accessing via HTTP/2 working 301 redirects set up for non-secure and non-www versions of website all to https://www. version Not using a CDN or proxy GSC reports home page as correctly indexed (with https://www. version canonicalised) but does still have the non-secure version of website as the referring page in the Discovery section. GSC also reports homepage as being crawled every day or so. Totally understand it can take time to update index, but we are at a complete loss to understand why GoogleBot continues to only go through HTTP/1.1 version not 2 Possibly related issue - and of course what is causing concern - is that new pages of site seem to index and perform well in SERP ... except home page. This never makes it to page 1 (other than for brand name) despite rating multiples higher in terms of content, speed etc than other pages which still get indexed in preference to home page. Any thoughts, further tests, ideas, direction or anything will be much appreciated!
Technical SEO | | AKCAC1 -
Can I use a 301 redirect to pass 'back link' juice to a different domain?
Hi, I have a backlink from a high DA/PA Government Website pointing to www.domainA.com which I own and can setup 301 redirects on if necessary. However my www.domainA.com is not used and has no active website (but has hosting available which can 301 redirect). www.domainA.com is also contextually irrelevant to the backlink. I want the Government Website link to go to www.domainB.com - which is both the relevant site and which also should be benefiting from from the seo juice from the backlink. So far I have had no luck to get the Government Website's administrators to change the URL on the link to point to www.domainB.com. Q1: If i use a 301 redirect on www.domainA.com to redirect to www.domainB.com will most of the backlink's SEO juice still be passed on to www.domainB.com? Q2: If the answer to the above is yes - would there be benefit to taking this a step further and redirect www.domainA.com to a deeper directory on www.domianB.com which is even more relevant?
Technical SEO | | DGAU
ie. redirect www.domainA.com to www.domainB.com/categoryB - passing the link juice deeper.0 -
Redirect multiple domains to 1 domain or not?
Hi there, I have client who has multiple domains that already have some PA and DA. Problem is that most websites have the same content and rank better on different keywords.
Technical SEO | | Leaf-a-mark
I want to redirect all the websites to 1 domain because it’s easier to manage and it removes any duplicate content. Question is if I redirect domain x to domain y do the rankings of domain x increase on domain y? Or is it better to keep domain x separately to generate more referral traffic to domain y? Thanks in advance! Cheers0 -
Old domain to new domain
Hi, A website on server A is no longer required. The owner has redirected some URLS of this website (via plugin) to his new website on server B -but not all URLS. So when I use COMMAND site:website A , I see a mixture of redirected URLS and not redirected URLS.Therefore two websites are still being indexed in some form and causing duplication. However, weirdly when I crawl with Screaming Frog I only see one URL which is 301 redirected to the new website. I would have thought I'd see lots of URLs which hadn't been redirected. How come it is different to using the site:command? Anyway, how do I move to the new website completely without the old one being indexed anymore. I thought I knew this but have read so many blogs I've confused myself! Should I: Redirect all URLS via the HTACESS file on old website on server A? There are lots of pages indexed so a lot of URLs. What if I miss some? or Point the old domain via DNS to server B and do the redirects in website B HTaccess file? This seems more sensible but does this method still retain the website rankings? Thanks for any help
Technical SEO | | AL123al0 -
Spammers created bad links to old hacked domain, now redirected to our new domain. Advice?
My client had an old site hacked (let's call it "myolddomain.com") and the hackers created many links in other hacked sites with links such as http://myolddomain.com/styless.asp?jordan-12-taxi-kids-cheap-T8927.html The old myolddomain.com site was redirected to a different new site since then, but we still see over a thousand spam links showing up in the new site's Search Console 404 crawl errors report. Also, using the links: operator in google search, we see many results of spam links. Should we be worried about these bad links pointing to our old site and redirecting to 404s on the new site? What is the best recommendation to clean them up? Ignore? 410s? Other? I'm seeing conflicting advice out there. The old site is hosted by the client's previous web developer who doesn't want to clean anything up on their end without an ongoing hosting contract. So beyond turning redirects on or off, the client doesn't want to pay for any additional hosting. So we don't have much control over anything related to "myolddomain.com". 😞 Thanks in advance for any assistance!
Technical SEO | | usDragons0 -
Using the word "FREE" in domain name
Hi, This may seem like a simple question but a new client of mine wishes to use a domain name with the word "free" in it. The website will offer free activity vouchers. I couldn't see this being a problem as there a lot of websites that do this although he was told it may present a problem with the search engines thinking the site was spammy. It won't be and will be offering information and vouchers on local sporting activities. I was wondering if anybody could clarify this please so I can give him a more definitive answer to his question. Thanks for your help.
Technical SEO | | malinkymedia0 -
I can buy a domain from a competitor. Whats the best way to make good use of these links for my existing website
I can buy a domain from a competitor. Whats the best way to make good use of these links for my existing website
Technical SEO | | Archers0 -
How to Redirect only specific pages to new domain
My HTACCESS FILE IS AS FOLLOWS: rewriteengine on
Technical SEO | | askthetrainer
rewritecond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mydomain.com$
rewriterule ^mydomain/(.*)$ "http://www.mydomain.com/$1" [R=301,L] #4d864805b49b5 I want to move ONLY specific pages from this domain to a new domain How do I edit my HTACCESS (which redirects http:// to www.) to move specific pages from old domain (which I have to delete) to new domain.... I.e. http://mydomaon.com/move.html needs to move to http://mynewdomain.com/move.html Where i can delete the original domains0