Merging 4 websites into one for a new site release (301 question)
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Hi guys and girls, I have a client that has 4 very outdated websites with about 50 pages on each. They are made up like: 1 brand group and 3 for each individual key service they offer, so let's call them: brand.com (A) brand-service-1.com (B) brand-service-2.com (C) brand-service-3.com (D) We've rebuilt the main site and aggregated all the content from the others (99% re-written). Am I correct in thinking the process for the new lauch would be: 1. Launch the new site on brand.com (A) and 301 all the old brand.com (A) pages to the related pages on the new site. 2. Redirect the other websites (B,C,D) on a domain level to the new site on the brand.com (A) domain. 3. Clean up the old URL's, sitemaps, errors in Google WMT Is this right? Anything I missed/better practices? I was also wondering if I should redirect B,C,D in stages, or use page level redirects.
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Only do 301 if the other sites have great value, you say that you have merged all content on 1 site an rewritten it? Google will automatic see the new content, the only reason i think you should do a 301 is if the other sites have a PR higher than 3 or 4, pr 2 and 1 are EASY to get. So take the new uniq content your wrote, combine each site with your different keywords. More on same page are good for results. You dont need a landing page for each keyword.
I would do this:
Check the PR and Alexa for all the sites, figure out if the traffic is real customers or just scans. There is no point in redirecting scan bots to new site, they will come automatic.
Then i would do the 301 from Google Webmaster Tools and make sure that they all go to front site of brand.com site. But only if they have anything to offer for your new site.
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Link related items and pages from the old sites to related items or pages on the new site. If there are no pages on the new site related to an old topic, redirect them to the home page of the new site if they have pagerank and weight. Do a URL removal in GWT if they do not.
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I use page-level redirects whenever possible. Better for Google and better for users. Besides that, sounds like you have a pretty sound strategy there.
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