Looking to merge 2 domains to 1 - Got some questions - do you have the insight?
-
Hey Everyone,
So the company I work for owns 2 domains. We have our main site which offers our portfolio of products and then we have a second domain, which we acquired, which focuses on one of our products (we also have this product available on our main site).
So here is where things get tricky for me. This second site (the one that focuses on one of our products) has a HUGE following and a higher domain authority of 80 when our main site has an authority of 70.
The higher up of the company want to merge the second popular site with our main site. There are many problems with this in my opinion since the following on this second site is very hardcore in the security space (I do not think that they will like to be sent over to a more corporate site) BUT I want to figure out the SEO value that can be gained or lost from this merge.
Some questions...
By 301 redirecting the pages over to our main page - I am assuming that the SEO power carries along with it so that these pages should still perform well?
Will the domain authority of our main site go up with the merge since we are bringing over pages with a lot of equity?
In your opinion, does it make more sense to keep the site with the higher authority since it is easier to host content that performs better?
Anyone have any experience with this?
SEO-wise do you think that this is a good idea or a bad idea?
Thanks a lot!
Pat
-
Hey Pat,
Good question. Firstly, well done for being involved with two very high Domain Authority sites. However (get ready for cheesy quote) with great power comes..... etc.
Strictly from an SEO perspective, 301ing pages from the specific product site to the main domain will transfer about 80-90% of the authority. You should see an increase in DA when you do this. However because DA is an exponential scale, it's difficult to say by how much.
I would definitely do it, making sure the pages are 301'd to equivalent pages on the main domain, not just the home page. I'd do this because it's easier to expand the content, and target new keywords.
However, the question you need to ask yourself is, "Is it the right thing for the brand?" especially as you have loyal followers for the specific product.
Hope that helps
Iain - Reload Media
-
Bosses can be really good at seeing some things and missing others.
SEOs can be really good at seeing some things and missing others.
I assume that you were hired for your expertise and that your bosses don't know much about SEO. So, if you do not agree with them you can show your value to the company by letting them know why you think that these sites should remain separate.
If you decide to do this do it in a very nice and business like way. Don't rant, just present data - and sometimes that data will be what you "think" will happen which could be wrong.
If my company bought a website we would not merge it immediately even if we wanted to. Instead we would run it for a while and get to know where its traffic comes from, how much money it makes, where its power flows from, etc.
We might decide to merge it or we might run it separately.
One advantage that I see for merging the new site into the original is to bring that traffic and power to the corporate site. There the visitor gets a much wider selection of products and the company has a better ability to market their brand to these visitors. And, if the original site is not dominant in your niche this extra power might push it there. But, if the original site is already dominant then the acquired site displaces a competitor.
If the acquired site outranks the original site maybe adding other products to that site would supercharge its revenue.
To determine if the hardcore traffic of the acquired site is receptive to the brand of the original site you might run some ads on that site to see if they are ignored or if they are clicked through. If you get lots of clickthroughs and those visitors engage the site and purchase then merging the site might work well. But if they ignore the ads or bounce that says something too.
I would be running some tests and getting some data before I do anything. And, anybody who says do this, or do that, is guessing. Add testing to your proposal to the bosses. Tell them that there are ways of measuring the value of this acquisition and if the traffic of the site is valuable to your brand.
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
-
Magento 1.9 SEO. I have product pages with identical On Page SEO score in the 90's. Some pull up Google page 1 some won't pull up at all. I am searching for the exact title on that page.
I have a website built on Magento 1.9. There are approximately 290,000 part numbers on the site. I am sampling Google SERP results. About 20% of the keywords show up on page 1 position 5 thru 10. 80% don't show up at all. When I do a MOZ page score I get high 80's to 90's. A page score of 89 on one part # may show up on page one, An identical page score on a different part # can't be found on Google. I am searching for the exact part # in the page title. Any thoughts on what may be going on? This seems to me like a Magento SEO issue.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CTOPDS0 -
2 menus Responsive website Seo question
Hi there Thanks for reading my post. İ am fairly new to SEO and dont know much coding. İ purchased an opencart theme and am working with a developer to modify it to make it more user friendly. The website is responsive and İ modified the menu for the desktop but now it doesnt have categories but just products. So it doesnt have URL for categories but just filter. So the developer recommended to add the mobile menu which has categories, and subcategories back to the desktop menu. İm not sure if this is a kosher approach to seo. Here is the link: As you can see there is a menu in the top menu and menu on the Main Menu. THoughts? will this be problem for duplicate content? The Main menu keywords are crucial and is what the website is revolving around. New website
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | socratic-goat7770 -
Lower quality new domain link vs higher quality repeat domain link
First time poster here with a dilemma that head scratching and spreadsheets can't solve! I'm trying to work out whether to focus on getting links from new domains or to nurture relationships with the bigger sites in our business and get more links. Of the two links below which does the community here think would be more valuable a signal to Google? Both would be links from within relevant text/post copy. Link 1. Site DA 30. No links currently from this domain. Link 2. Site DA 60. Many links over last 12 months already from this domain. I suspect link 1 but given the enormous disparity in ranking power am I correct?! Thanks for any considered opinions out there! Matthew
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mat20150 -
Question about using abbreviation
Hello, I have this abbreviation inside my domain name, ok? now for a page URL name, do you recommend me to use the actual word (which shortened form of it is inside domain name) in a page name? Or when have abbreviation in domain name, then using its actual word in a page name is not good? It's all about how much google recognize abbreviation as the actual word and gives the same value of word to it? do I risk not using the actual word? Hope made myself clear ) thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mdmoz0 -
Microsite question
Good morning, I have a client who is a local realtor www.chantre.com and they have several locations in their region. We created individual sites for their locations that are linked from their main site (on the left bottom). I need some advice and guidance... Are the location sites a good consideration as microsites? I know we should include the rel=canonical tag and are in the process of doing so, but any comments on this would be appreciated I know the answer to this one, but the client insists on continually asking about it...would it be better to have the location sites linked from the main site as subdomains? Any other suggestions to either prove or disprove our technique in breaking out the location sites, whether it's a good idea or if we are harming their SEO is appreciated THANKS!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gXeSEO
Darlene0 -
Question For Anyone
Hi All, Would you be able to answer one small question If you go to Australian Google - www.google.com.au and search for "loans" on positions number # 38 you will see the following site paydayloansyouknow.com.au . It has only 3 pages , 0 links, PA 1,and DA 1 How it's possible to archive such results? This is the print screen in case you dont see what i am asking about
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Webdeal
( http://www.freeimagehosting.net/oa75d Will appreciate any answer?0 -
Social Buttons Help SEO, 2 Questions...
Howdy Guys, I noticed a weird thing over the weekend - our main keyword has been hit pretty hard by penguin and we had dropped down to #79. On Friday I decided to change some on-page optimisation and changed the title tag and some tags. When I've ran my rank tracker this morning we have jumped up to #62... Has anyone else noticed just a simple change boosts rankings? Second Questions We took all our social buttons off the website back in January as no-body was using them but from a few recent reports I've seen having the buttons on the site help organic rankings... Is this true? Scott
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ScottBaxterWW0 -
Crawl questions
My first website crawl indicating many issues. I corrected the issues, requested another crawl and received the results. After viewing the excel file I have some questions. 1. There are many pages with missing Titles and Meta Descriptions in the Excel file. An example is http://www.terapvp.com/threads/help-us-decide-on-terapvp-com-logo.25/page-2 That page clearly has a meta description and title. It is a forum thread. My forum software does a solid job of always providing those tags. Why would my crawl report not show this information? This occurs on numerous pages. 2. I believe all my canonical URLs are properly set. My crawl report has 3k+ records, largely due to there being 10 records for many pages. These extra records are various sort orders and style differences for the same page i.e. ?direction=asc. My need for a crawl report is to provide actionable data so I can easily make SEO improvements to my site where necessary. These extra records don't provide any benefit. IF the crawl report determined there was not a clear canonical URL, then I could understand. But that is not the case. An example is http://www.terapvp.com/forums/news/ If you look at the source you will clearly see Where is the benefit to including the 10 other records in the Crawl report which show this same page in various sort orders? Am I missing anything? 3. My robots.txt appropriately blocks many pages that I do not wish to be crawled. What is the benefit to including these many pages in the crawl report? Perhaps I am over analyzing this report. I have read many articles on SEO, but now that I have found SEOmoz, I can see I will need to "unlearn what I have learned". Many things such as setting meta keyword tags are clearly not helpful. I wish to focus my energy and I was looking to the crawl report as my starting point. Either I am missing something, or the report design needs improvement.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RyanKent0