Merging 3 websites into 1
-
Hi
I was wondering if someone can give me a bit of advice - outside of my full time job I run three websites - all in the same area, but all do three different things
1. Directory (DA19)
2. Blog (DA 23)
3. Products (DA35)
I want to merger all three website into one and all be on one website (rather do it now than keep working on three websites). I have included the DAs of each site ( I know they are not amazing, but i've only recently started working on two of them), but I want to place all three websites under the Blog url.
Regarding 301's of the pages, would I be better doing at the top level and 301 all the pages to the home page, or spending the time and 301 the old product page for instance to the new product page - this is a much bigger project, but what are the potential gains.
Is there anything else I should consider when switching the sites - all three are wordpress sites (I know it has its limitations but they are easy to create).
Thanks in Advance
Andy
-
Hi,
Going to agree with Fuel Interactive here - the best practice is to redirect page-by-page if you are combining sites, unless you are set on deleting / consolidating content from the merged sites into one smaller, tidier website. In that case, it's still best practice to redirect to the most appropriate page if one exists, rather than just to the home page.
It can be a real pain to go through a consolidation / redirection process like this, so only do this if it's really necessary and will likely cause a big uplift in either performance or your ability to manage each area of the business.
Dave is right that IIS can do a URL by URL redirect for you, or you can do this in your .htaccess file if you are using an Apache server as opposed to a Microsoft IIS server.
-
"Regarding 301's of the pages, would I be better doing at the top level and 301 all the pages to the home page, or spending the time and 301 the old product page for instance to the new product page - this is a much bigger project, but what are the potential gains."
From a user stand point and a search engine stand point, I feel it would be better to take the time to redirect each product page from the old site to the corresponding product page on the new site. I am not sure if there is an easy way to automate this, but it is definitely the route to go versus just sending all of the pages to the home page. Think of it from a user point of view. If there was a link to a product on the old site out there and someone clicks expecting more information on that product and then gets redirected to a homepage they will not find what they are looking for and might just bounce off the site. However, bringing them to the appropriate page will keep the user on the site longer and might ultimately end in a conversion (not sure what vertical you are in, I associated products with retail). This would ultimately send positive signals to search engines on the placements of those redirects. Though it might not seem like an issue for a single page or even a few pages, implemented across the board this could make a huge difference.
Hope that helps.
-
On IIS you have the ability to redirect the whole domain with a HTTP ReDirect 301 which also takes care of URIs with something like :-
Redirect requests to this destination : http://www.eriks.co.uk/$S$Q
This then takes anything that follows and re-maps to the same URI on the new page. (assuming and providing the URI's are going to be the same!)
The other option would be 301 redirects to avoid the SEO hit being as harsh.
I have combined a number of sites in the last 12 months in this way.
Good luck!
-
Hi Andy,
Interesting project. So you want a Wordpress multisite or do you want to move all your content to a single domain? It would help if we could get your URL to see what's going on. Moving sites is painful, especially because you will undoubtedly take a hit in the rankings for awhile.
After thinking about this for just a few minutes, I wonder why you need to put all the content from each site under blog. Why not keep products, directory and blog? And just after writing that question, now I know I need more details in order to give you sound advice. Post back with specific domains if you still need help.
Cheers!
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
-
Any Tips for Reviving Old Websites?
Hi, I have a series of websites that have been offline for seven years. Do you guys have any tips that might help restore them to their former SERPs glory? Nothing about the sites themselves has changes since they went offline. Same domains, same content, and only a different server. What has changed is the SERPs landscape. I've noticed competitive terms that these sites used to rank on the first page for with far more results now. I have also noticed some terms result in what seems like a thesaurus similar language results from traditionally more authoritative websites instead of the exact phrase searched for. This concerns me because I could see a less relevant page outranking me just because it is on a .gov domain with similar vocabulary even though the result is not what people searching for the term are most likely searching for. The sites have also lost numerous backlinks but still have some really good ones.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CopBlaster.com1 -
Blog on Custom Website - WordPress Alternatives
Howdy folks. I'm trying to find any good alternative for adding CMS blog to custom website. Most people, us included, are using WP, but, as we know, it's really painful to work with, easily hackable etc etc. So, I wonder if anyone knows of a blog platform, which can be installed on our own websites for blogging, but without drawbacks of WordPress. Any nudge in correct direction will be appreciated. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DmitriiK1 -
Need assistance in improving SEO of website
Dear SEO Expert, We run a website www.guitarmonk.com. Moz has told us of some errors at our website viz.: Especially duplicate content etc and whatever in addition you suggest should be good for the website for certain relative important keywords. Regards
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Guitarmonk0 -
Website keeps dropping in ranking with no visible penalty.
Hi everyone! I would really appreciate your help on this! The website URL is: www.gipsydharma.com It has now been over a year, but we're finding it very difficult to start ranking for any useful keywords. Some keywords like: leather boots / boots for women / handmade clothing at some point went up to page 20, but have now dropped again below page 50. Now, most of our traffic comes from social media so the business is going OK. But the question still remains, what does Google have against the above URL? Its not a super amazing website, but it provides unique and engaging content and has zero spam. I also don't think its over optimized, but I may be wrong on this. Recently, I've also noticed that the Domain Authority has also been going down, it was 46 at some point and now its 40. There's no visible penalty and all the pre-Penguin links (of which there weren't that many, I think) were cleaned up months ago, without Google suggesting that. There are very few keyword rich backlinks and a lot of them come naturally anyways. So again, any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GipsyDharma0 -
Shell we provide dofollow outbound links from our website?
Hello, I am little confused about providing dofollow links from our website. We have a social shopping website where users can create catalog of their favorite products by bookmarking them from other websites, so our website might have thousands of outbound links. Now the confusion is whether we should have these links "nofollow" or "dofollow"? As per my understanding dofollow links will pass juice to other websites but on the other hand it might benefit us as well, sellers might come and bookmark their products for getting dofollow links. I read somewhere that if we have quality outbound links around a topic, google treats us as hub for that topic. But I am not clear if we will get this advantage only when these links are dofollow? Please help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | saurabh19050 -
External links from banned websites
Currently working with a client that has seen his rankings diminish after the penguin update. I've manually analyzed all his 600 backlinks and identified approximately 85 external links from websites that have been banned by Google. How do these sites affect his current rankings? Should i just disavow all these links using the Google disavow tool? Any comments would be highly appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Nick_Johansson0 -
Disabling a website - What to do with "link juice"?
Hi I built a website for a client a long time ago now and for a number of reasons I have decided to shut down the website. None payment being one of the reasons! My question to all you SEO guru's out there is, what should I do with 301 redirects. The site is an e-commerce based website and my personal website is simply advertising my services and portfolio. If I 301 redirect all the traffic from the customer website, will there be any issue with Google (or any search engine) seeing that my website is receiving traffic for search phrases such as "Coffee Mugs"? I.e. abolutely no relevance at all to my website content! My worry is my site could be penalised for a flurry of thousands of redirected links. Also, if I redirect everything to my site and the customer decides to pay the bill in due course, I will then remove the redirects - I guess this will have a massive impact on the rankings of the site? Thanks for reading and any advice.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | yousayjump0 -
Content Marketing: Should we build a separate website or built in site within the Website itself?
Hi Mozzers, Client: Big carpet cleaner player in the carpet cleaning industry Main Goal: Creating good content to Get more organic traffic to our main site Structure of the extra content: It will act like a blog but will be differentiated from the regular site by not selling anything but just creating good content. The look and design will be different from the client's site. SEO question: In terms of SEO, what would be the most beneficial for us to do, should we built in this new section/site outside or inside the client's site? I personally think that it should be separated from the main site because of the main reasons: A followed link to the main site Anchor texts implementation linking back to our service pages If we would to choose to build in this content, it would be highly beneficial for getting organic traffic within the main site but I am afraid this will not provide us any link juice since anchor texts won't be accounted the same since all of those would be located in the Nav bar of the main site. Can someone tell me what would be the best in terms of SEO? P.S: My boss doesn't agree with me and would rather go the second option (build in within the main site) that's why i am asking you guys what would be the most beneficial? Thank you Guys
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0