Combining two exact match domains under brand name

[JDP]

I run two websites that sell basically the same product which we make ourselves but to two separate audiences.  I've made my living off them for the past 6 years or so.  I used emd's in both cases to rank for my main search terms.  We dropped a few places last October but not too bad.  I was thinking of combining the sites under one brand name hoping that they would rank better combined.  Both sites have similar link profiles but with some links unique to each.  For instance, I buy a yahoo directory listing  for each site but each site has some unique product reviews on blogs.  Is this a good idea or am I better off leaving them separate?

[JDP]

Thanks EGOL,  Fantastic answer.  I'm looking for a new foundation to work from and would love to work hard on just one site.  I'm pretty sure the sites will work best together in the long run but,  I sure don't want to mess up what I already have.

[EGOL]

I would be a bit cautious.

If your domains were just a couple years old I would say "go for it".  However, I had an EMD that was established in the SERPs and held #1 for ten years.  I moved it to a better domain with a 301 redirect and lost the #1 ranking.  This was a site with an established audience and was getting a few thousand domain queries per month.

I didn't get the #1 back until the new domain was recognized and accepted by its audience and again getting a few thousand domain queries per month.

In my opinion, the more established your domain the greater the risk of the move.

Your situation is a bit difference since you will be uniting two sites and they might each bring assets to the merger.  If there is very little overlap between their link profiles you might gain a lot by merging.  But if there is a lot of link overlap then you merge them and the new site is not much stronger than either of them as freestanding sites.

I place a lot of value on the mindset of the webmaster because that determines how hard you are willing to fight.  If you are doing this as an offensive move and have a plan for big promotion of this new combined domain then I would say that this might work out for you.

However, if you are doing this as a defensive move because you are getting your ass kicked everywhere, I'd say that the writing is on the wall for the future and you better get to work competing against your enemy.

[JDP]

Thanks for the thoughtful response.  To tell you the truth I do have a lot of quality content that didn't quite fit on either site well that I could use as the base content for the branded site.

[Chris.Menke]

I guess the safest, fastest, most gradual way to do it would go like this:

Go ahead and get your brand site up and running as a stand alone site on a different host with different registration info.  Work on creating content and a link profile as separate from the others as you can.  Set up a google+ profile verified for that domain and begin ramping up social media efforts for it.

Then, start pumping good content onto your emd's that gradually link out to numerous other quality resources, including, once in a while, the quality content you're putting on your brand domain.

With this method, you'll hope to get traction for your brand domain before your emd's lose value (if they do). But if the emd's do lose value before they can pass full 301 juice to your brand domain, your brand site is already building a solid base for itself.

On the other hand, the fastest way to deal with it would be to create your brand site and then to go ahead and 301 each page from your emd's to the appropriate page on your brand site and get the benefit of those two sites 301ing to the brand for as long as that benefit lasted.

With this method, you'd certainly expect to get traction for your brand domain before you emd's lose value (if, in fact, they did), but you'd lose out on the benefit of having those two emd's in the serps at the same time--for the period of time that they didn't actually loose value (if they did--but you'd never be able to actually determine that.)

As the executive decision maker, you get to make that call.

Does that make sense?