SEO's done, 301s in place, old site STILL outranks new site. What to do?

[cbrush]

Since Sep 2010 I have had a site up with minimal SEO optimization (www.chrisbrushmusic.com). Oct 29, 2012, I launched a new site on a new domain (www.chrisbrushdrums.com) with more content and tons of SEO work behind it. The content of the new site is significantly different from the old site, and I wish to keep the old site around. I have 301's in place for specific URLs on the old site that point to the new site. I have submitted xml sitemaps for the new site. As of now, the old site still outranks the new site (i.e. Google search for "nashville session drummer" and my old site is #9 - my new site is nowhere). What should I do? Thanks.

[cbrush]

The old site deals primarily with me as a music producer and a mix engineer -- two other things I enjoy doing and make money doing. However, drums are definitely the primary focus of what I do.

I guess I am not opposed to ditching the old site if I could find a way to present my other skills in a way that wasn't branded with drums (doing that might indicate that I wouldn't be as good as a dedicated mix engineer and the like). Would it make sense to design a couple of specialty pages and host them under a subdomain of my current new site?

I guess I am fearful to ditch the old site because it actually does rank in Google. Would I see better results by getting rid of the old site or just 301 redirecting the whole thing?

[Alex-Harford]

If I was you I'd 301 everything to the new site. Perhaps you could have an archive section for the content you mentioned you want to keep separate? You are competing with yourself, especially with the similarities in the domain name, and I'd guess there might be a duplicate content/keyword targeting overlap somewhere.

How does the focus of the new site differ from your old one? If you think of it from a potential client's point of view, why would they want to visit two websites to find out about you? Might it be useful to? Surely any relevant information should be on the same website?

Unless the sites have a completely different focus, say you were a photographer too, so one site was about that side and the other your drumming, I'd say it's best to have one site.

[cbrush]

Thanks Paul! Actually, my home page is optimized for "session drummer." I merely used the "nashville session drummer" example simply because it showed in one page of results 1) my competitors (who don't have their sites optimized for "nashville session drummer either"), and 2) my old site showing.

However, your thoughts, especially the reminder about building links with other organizations and about the timeline for expected results, were re-assuring and served as a call to re-focus my efforts.

I am still a bit concerned about whether or not my old site, while displaying information separate and apart from the new site, is hurting my rankings. I read a few frightening snippets online hinting that old sites staying live after a relaunch could be killing search results for the new site. Thoughts?

[ThompsonPaul]

Chris, the new site likely won't rank for "Nashville session drummer" because the site isn't optimised in any way for that phrase. In fact, as far as I can tell, the phrase is never even used on the site? (I used both the built-in search and a custom Google search and neither could find the phrase.)

The closest I can find is on the front page where the term "Nashville-based session drummer" is the closest you get, and it's only used once in the body of the page. The only way you'll rank consistently for that term is if you strongly optimise a full page around just that term - especially since it's your "money" term.

Just using the individual words Nashville, session, and drummer randomly throughout the site isn't going to be nearly enough. You can certainly use variations of those words on the target page to support the term, but if the phrase you need to rank for is "Nashville session drummer" you're going to need to use that exact phrase in the strongest locations on the page - in the page title, the meta-title, the URL, and the strongly written page content, for starters.

That's the on-page part of the battle.

In addition, you're going to need to get other relevant, high-value websites to link to your site, and specifically that page, if you're going to build and maintain rankings for that term. And you'll need at least some of them to link using that specific phrase.

In order to avoid frustration, you need to realize your time horizon for expecting rankings is far too optimistic. A brand new domain/website with no authoritative external links pointing to it is more likely to require months, not weeks, to begin to rank for competitive terms - and then only if the on-page optimization is done and the off-page work is ongoing.

You say in the title of this question that SEO is done - what keyword terms was the site optimised for - and on what specific pages? Search engines don't rank a site, they rank individual pages. So each page should be targeting a specific term or two (if they're closely related). At a quick glance, I'm not seeing that kind of on-page optimisation having been done on the site.

Lastly, just a heads-up. SEO is never "done" - it's an ongoing process because competitors who continue to improve their optimisation will come along and displace you even after you do get ranked.

Paul

[cbrush]

Thanks for the quick response. My motivation in keeping both sites is that the old site deals with aspects of my career that are still relevant but beyond the focus of the new site. As to the 301s, I did indeed use 301 redirects pointing to the new site from select pages of the old site.

[SEO5Team]

Evelyn, keeping in mind that you launched the site end of Oct, you'll have to be patient with the rankings. I would have been very surprised if you new site had started ranking already. The fact that you are keeping both the domains might also make things tricky. Does the new site have any links pointing back to it. You could have done a 301 redirect from the old to the new URL and that might have helped the new site rank faster. What's your motivation to keep both the sites in the index?