Merging two existing company sites into one
-
Hi Moz community,
I have recently started a new job for a Fire & Security company in the UK to help with their non existent SEO efforts.
Currently they have two separate websites. One of the websites is for their services and the other website is for their eCommerce store selling fire alarm equipment etc.
The eCommerce store is higher up in the SERPs and overall has a lot more links. It also uses a better branded domain name.
As I have never attempted such a project I have a few questions.
The current eCommerce store is hosted and maintained by another web company which uses their bespoke CMS. What I want to do is take the service website and merge it with the ecommerce domain, however the service site runs on wordpress, which I want to continue for its flexibility.
The service page wants to be the new homepage with a link on it to go to the store. I just cant get my head around the whole operation so if anyone could give me some advice to point me in the right direction that would be great.
Thanks
-
Thanks for the help Nick.
-
Howdy,
Why not just make the store store.fireCompany.com and the main landing page just fireCompany.com. You could keep the bespoke CMS if you don't want to tackle changing the store that way and use wordpress or whatever you prefer for the corporate/service page. 301 the old pages in your .htaccess file to the new address. Basically you'd just be moving the store content from AwesomeFireDomain to store.AwesomeFireDomain and the less popular service stuff over to AwesomeFireDomain. You'd have to make sure not to duplicate names with the whole 301 deal. And your homepage on AwesomeFireDomain might lose some juice temporarily because the content may be less SEO friendly than what was there.
You could also go the other way with this which is even easier by doing corporate.AwesomeFireDomain.com and just leaving the store alone. I'm always weary of mucking around with a domain and site that is producing.
That's just how I would handle it. I'm sure some SEO pro will have a quicker, easier answer for you!
-Nick
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
-
How to properly spin off a subdivision of an existing company?
An existing client of mine is the parent of a subsidiary. The parent business currently drives traffic for the subsidiary and has been doing so for many years. The subsidiaries owner is wanting to create their own website even though the companies are still in great relationships. So I'm wanting to make sure they don't compete. What necessary steps do I need to take? My one major issue is the address. They both work under the same address and I plan on using a suite number for the subsidiary. Will that work? Even though the parent company doesn't priortize it's subsidary business for SEO, I don't want to drop in rankings and for them to compete. Any knowledge or insight on this would be greatly appreciated! The more details the better 🙂 Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rzettle25250 -
Is there an issue with my site?
Been mostly hanging around top of page two for the last couple of years for “Liverpool Wedding photographer” although got myself on page 1 for “Liverpool photographer” I have split the title of the page to target these two keywords. I took the Liverpool photographer off the title to see if it was being detrimental to the “Liverpool wedding photographer” I didn’t see no increase in ranking so put it back as I get a bit of commercial work from it. Since last year I have got onto page 1 at least three times around position 5-6. Within a week or two I start sliding down again and end up back at top of page two. I could understand this slow push out if my competitors were busy SEO wise but from what I have seen they are not. There is a guy using the keywords in URL and calls himself “Liverpool wedding photographer” last time I checked he literally had no links but is in the first 5 positions. I have I think a better link profile than every one else. Although I am on and off with Facebook and Instagram, (more off) so that probably isn’t helping. Although I have a colleague in the video side of things and he doesn’t use social media at all and it hasn’t harmed him. A few years ago I was burned quite badly by a total charlatan. He sunk my home page to page 4. He talked the talk about creating landing pages but his methods were shoddy to say the least. I can’t believe I was taken in by him, although I was only with him for 2 months. He was still using spammy link techniques to generate lots of toxic links for me! I disavowed all of his links and put the keywords back on the home page and was back to my usual top of page 2 position within a week. Since then I have disavowed all directory links and anything not wedding related. I have an article which ranks 1st or second for “Nikon CLS”. I have also another article of 2000 words or so on another reasonable placed photography website. A few links from other vendors or people I have taken photographs for. I have about 10 featured weddings with a link on 4 good weddings blogs. I don’t think a massive amount of blog comments although I have stopped doing this. If I look at most of the competitors these are their main links, with directories as well! Last winter I put a quite substantial article about documentary wedding photography on my home page. I flew to number 2, although I photographed The World Transformed (the alternative labour conference in Liverpool). I got a lot of clicks to a gallery page (few thousand off social media} so I don’t know if that coincided with it. Same thing – watching the website go down a few positions every day until within just over a week or two I was about 4<sup>th</sup> on page 2! Its like my website is on a spring which can push into page 1 but rebounds back to top of page 2. I am staring to worry that my site has been marked as a bad character in some way because I get what seems to be rough treatment from google compared to my peers. I have written I think 4 or 5 (1500 word) articles the last couple of months talking about lenses and wedding photography related topics and Google pushed me back to page 1, peaking At position 5. I was there for a few weeks and then the slide happened again. Bit demoralised at the moment, what to do? Any help or pointers would be most appreciated. Best wishes. David.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WallerD0 -
Two Companies Merging - Impacts on SEO
Hi there! I work with Company A. They've decided to merge with Company B (who we don't work with/doesn't do SEO) under Company B's name. (We would then work on Company B's website.) What would be the impact on SEO if the content from Company A's website is moved to Company B's website, and Company A's website would be deleted? Factors to consider: Both websites have a domain authority of 6 and a homepage authority of 21, and each has less than 5 backlinks. Company A ranks much better than Company B (of the KWs we're tracking, Company A ranked on Page One for 15.3% of them, while Company B ranked for 2.8% of them). So, what I am asking is: If they do the content migration to Company B's website and get rid of Company A's website, what negative impact would that have on SEO? Could we keep both sites, but change the mentions of Company A on their website to Company B? Although the URL would still be Company A's name, could Company B treat this as a microsite and take up more of the search engine real estate since Company A already has rankings? What would be another solution? The companies merging is definitely happening. Thank you in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BlueCorona1 -
Splitting One Site Into Two Sites Best Practices Needed
Okay, working with a large site that, for business reasons beyond organic search, wants to split an existing site in two. So, the old domain name stays and a new one is born with some of the content from the old site, along with some new content of its own. The general idea, for more than just search reasons, is that it makes both the old site and new sites more purely about their respective subject matter. The existing content on the old site that is becoming part of the new site will be 301'd to the new site's domain. So, the old site will have a lot of 301s and links to the new site. No links coming back from the new site to the old site anticipated at this time. Would like any and all insights into any potential pitfalls and best practices for this to come off as well as it can under the circumstances. For instance, should all those links from the old site to the new site be nofollowed, kind of like a non-editorial link to an affiliate or advertiser? Is there weirdness for Google in 301ing to a new domain from some, but not all, content of the old site. Would you individually submit requests to remove from index for the hundreds and hundreds of old site pages moving to the new site or just figure that the 301 will eventually take care of that? Is there substantial organic search risk of any kind to the old site, beyond the obvious of just not having those pages to produce any more? Anything else? Any ideas about how long the new site can expect to wander the wilderness of no organic search traffic? The old site has a 45 domain authority. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Why is this site not ranking?
http://www.petstoreunlimited.com They get good grades from the on-page tool. The links are not amazing, but are not super spammy. Yet it ranks for nothing they target Any reason why?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Atomicx0 -
Copying contents from a blog site (External) to a company blogsite (internal)
Hi, I have a client that has several external blogs www.blogsite1.info www.blogsite2.info and he also has the www.companywebsite.com the main domain of course is the comapnywebsite.com. They are doing some thing wrong, because instead of generating contents inside the main domain, the create contents in the blogsites and send links to the blogsites to see those contents. So they are inviting their users to EXIT the website... So, I told him, If you want to generate contents, please keep a blog INSIDE your domain www.companywebsite.com/blog, but keep the other ones, cause they are generating links (they are .info domains, that is not good, but they are nice keyword match domains) Now, he told me he was thinking on copy and paste the contents from the external blogsites to the internal website. I warned him about generating duplicate content. But.... is it really a problem? They are not in the same domain... Could google give a penalty because of that to the main domain? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | teconsite0 -
Linking to bad sites
Hi, I just have a quick question. Is it very negative to link to "bad" sites, such as online pharmacies, dating, adult sites, that sort of stuff? How much does linking to a "bad" site negatively affect a "good" site? Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | salvyy0 -
Can you advise why my site get outranked by sites with way less authority and so on
Hello SeoMoz, As a new member I first want to thank you guys for your service, seomoz is by far the best resource and toolbox I have ever found. I have a question, or more of a request if you could advise me on what I do wrong.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DennisForte
I have a website: www.letsflycheaper.com with a Domain Authority of 80, and my target keywords are keywords like: cheap business class, business class flights.
My target page is: www.letsflycheaper.com/business-class.php. With all my keywords I am page 2 and I have a real hard time getting on the first page, but if I look at my competitors like: www.wholesale-flights.com with a Domain Authority of 'just' 50, crappy backlinks and so on, they are all on the first page with almost all of my keywords that I want to target. What do I do wrong? Can you maybe give me a couple tips on where I should focus on more? Hopefully you guys can help me... Kind Regards, Ramon van Meer0