Merging Domains

[PapercutInteractive]

Hi, Everyone,

My company is currently working with a client that has multiple websites and is interested in merging them into one. One is a primary corporate site, the other is a site for a single line of products. They obviously want to merge the product site into the corporate site. The interesting thing is that the product site outperforms the corporate site. It has the highest traffic, and it has far more links/linking domains, a higher domain authority (although only by two points), and much more social activity. However, their reasons for wanting to merge the two are completely valid - less management, URL would match print collateral, etc.

They're asking our opinion on whether or not to move forward with the merger. I'm leaning toward no simply because of the fact that the site they want to merge is outperforming the other. I'm curious, though, to get some other opinions on this. Would a merger be worth the work in this case? Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!

[PapercutInteractive]

Thanks for all of the helpful responses!

[DennisSeymour]

I would give them what they want, and inform them of the possible outcomes

More often than not (with proper redirects in place) the new page will rank on the same spot after a while.

It's a win win for them. They get what they want, they have 1 domain to worry about plus they have built a lot of links to the separate domains.

It's like the traditional ecommerce strategy: build separate product specific sites -> after building enough traffic -> 301 to category page of main domain. We all know it's harder to get natural links to category/product pages so that's what I would do.

gazzerman1's suggestion would be my next play if that doesn't get approved.

[gazzerman1]

Another option is to host the same content on the main site and use the canonical tag on them. But the I would do as Devanur Rafi suggests, replicate the content on the new site and 301 redirect to the old pages. All the links gained will follow the 301 so the power will transfer over. I would leave the old site up permanently otherwise any links pointing to the old domain will be lost when the 301 redirect no longer exists. Another option is to go to webmaster or some other tool get a list of those links and contact the webmaster to let them know of the site move and to change the links to the new domain.

[Devanur-Rafi]

Hi friend, IMHO, you should go ahead with the merger as the idea is to have one stable and wide website. Moreover, all the SEO goodies of other websites will be inherited by the destination site within few weeks. Don't worry about the product site outperforming the main site. We did this  twice in the past and came out with flying colors. Go ahead with a proper page-to-page 301 redirection for the merger and don't kill the product site for at least 6-7 months.

Please write back with more queries.

Best regards,

Devanur Rafi