Merging 3 websites into 1
-
Hi
I was wondering if someone can give me a bit of advice - outside of my full time job I run three websites - all in the same area, but all do three different things
1. Directory (DA19)
2. Blog (DA 23)
3. Products (DA35)
I want to merger all three website into one and all be on one website (rather do it now than keep working on three websites). I have included the DAs of each site ( I know they are not amazing, but i've only recently started working on two of them), but I want to place all three websites under the Blog url.
Regarding 301's of the pages, would I be better doing at the top level and 301 all the pages to the home page, or spending the time and 301 the old product page for instance to the new product page - this is a much bigger project, but what are the potential gains.
Is there anything else I should consider when switching the sites - all three are wordpress sites (I know it has its limitations but they are easy to create).
Thanks in Advance
Andy
-
Hi,
Going to agree with Fuel Interactive here - the best practice is to redirect page-by-page if you are combining sites, unless you are set on deleting / consolidating content from the merged sites into one smaller, tidier website. In that case, it's still best practice to redirect to the most appropriate page if one exists, rather than just to the home page.
It can be a real pain to go through a consolidation / redirection process like this, so only do this if it's really necessary and will likely cause a big uplift in either performance or your ability to manage each area of the business.
Dave is right that IIS can do a URL by URL redirect for you, or you can do this in your .htaccess file if you are using an Apache server as opposed to a Microsoft IIS server.
-
"Regarding 301's of the pages, would I be better doing at the top level and 301 all the pages to the home page, or spending the time and 301 the old product page for instance to the new product page - this is a much bigger project, but what are the potential gains."
From a user stand point and a search engine stand point, I feel it would be better to take the time to redirect each product page from the old site to the corresponding product page on the new site. I am not sure if there is an easy way to automate this, but it is definitely the route to go versus just sending all of the pages to the home page. Think of it from a user point of view. If there was a link to a product on the old site out there and someone clicks expecting more information on that product and then gets redirected to a homepage they will not find what they are looking for and might just bounce off the site. However, bringing them to the appropriate page will keep the user on the site longer and might ultimately end in a conversion (not sure what vertical you are in, I associated products with retail). This would ultimately send positive signals to search engines on the placements of those redirects. Though it might not seem like an issue for a single page or even a few pages, implemented across the board this could make a huge difference.
Hope that helps.
-
On IIS you have the ability to redirect the whole domain with a HTTP ReDirect 301 which also takes care of URIs with something like :-
Redirect requests to this destination : http://www.eriks.co.uk/$S$Q
This then takes anything that follows and re-maps to the same URI on the new page. (assuming and providing the URI's are going to be the same!)
The other option would be 301 redirects to avoid the SEO hit being as harsh.
I have combined a number of sites in the last 12 months in this way.
Good luck!
-
Hi Andy,
Interesting project. So you want a Wordpress multisite or do you want to move all your content to a single domain? It would help if we could get your URL to see what's going on. Moving sites is painful, especially because you will undoubtedly take a hit in the rankings for awhile.
After thinking about this for just a few minutes, I wonder why you need to put all the content from each site under blog. Why not keep products, directory and blog? And just after writing that question, now I know I need more details in order to give you sound advice. Post back with specific domains if you still need help.
Cheers!
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
-
What is the difference between Multilingual and multiregional websites?
Hi all, So, I have studied about multilingual and multiregional websites. As soon as possible, we will expand the website languages to english and spanish. The urls will be like this: http://example.com/pt-br
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mobic
http://example.com/en-us
http://example.com/es-ar Thereby, the tags will be like this: Great! But my doubt is: To /es-ar/ The indexing will be only to spanish languages in Argentina? What about the other countries that speak the same language, like Spain, Mexico, etc.I don't know if it will be possible develop a Spanish languages especially for each region. Should I do an multiregional website or only multilingual? How Google sees this case? Thanks for any advice!!1 -
Schema Review For Attorney wordpress website
I have a wordpress website for an attorney. I would like to implement schema markup rating/review. My client has really good reviews and I want to show the 5 stars in the SERPs. His rating is 5 out 5 stars. There are different plugins that are good only to leave a review, and the stars would only appear only for that review page in the SERPs. I would like the home page to have the stars in the SERPs. Is there a way to get it done? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Armen-SEO0 -
New websites
Hi Moz community, My company updated and used a new developer to build and re-design their charity websites: www.runforcharity.com, www.cycleforcharity.com and www.sportforcharity.com. This sites were "re-launched" at the beggining of December 2015 and I have now been able to get a good 6 weeks worth of data. I've been religiously using Moz.com for a couple of years and I use it simply for SEO purposes. Our websites are built upon organic traffic being driven to them and I have noticed that the PA on the new sites has taken a hammering. They all appear to have a PA of 1 and I'm at a loss why? It appears that no page has h1 text? Would this be an issue with the developer or something the content team is doing wrong? Any help of advice would be much appreciated. Many thanks Ryan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bennerya0 -
GWT - Links to website - Are they accurate
Hi I am looking at GWT more and more and I starting not to believe the information within it. For example we had a link on XYZ.com say 6 months ago. This link as been removed no reference to our website, however it still showing on GWT inbound links. I have noticed quite a few sites which have no relevance to our site. Is anyone else finding the information wrong in WMT
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cocoonfxmedia0 -
Can I use the old website content on the new website, after deleting it from the server?
My website nowwhatstudio.com hit by google pure spam and google applied manual spam action to the website. I create new website (nowwhatmoments.com) with the same content from the old spam action website (nowwhatstudio.com). As google removed my old website content from search indexed. Can I use the same content for a new website? If I delete my old website from the server, after that Can I use the old website content for a new website? Or Can make edits the old website content and make it 80% original for a new website?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bondhoward0 -
Different domains for multilingual website
Hey guys, A site that I'm currently working on as different domains for each website language. So for example: word1word2.com for the english version word3word4.com for the french version word5word6.com for spanish version .... Is it better to move all of the different languages to the same domain and use subfolders for each language /fr/... Please note that the domains being used bring in organic traffic as well as they are EMDs. Thank You.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BruLee0 -
New website from scratch and redirects or maintaining domain?
Hi friends, I have to face a big challenge. My client has an online store with about 250 products. The store is based on a web service provider whose CMS gives critical duplicate content issues. My client is considering to rethink the store from scratch and choose a CMS that offers more guarantees. I have two options: Starting the store from scratch with new domain and make redirects (whole domain or page to page?) Maintaining the domain, careful to keep the current structure of the URL, which is currently pretty bad I hope you could help me. Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sergio_redondo0 -
How to deal with 1 product in 1 country and 3 languages?
After reading multiple posts on dealing with multilanguage sites (also checked http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=12a5507889c20461&hl=en), I still haven't got an answer to a very specific question I have. Please allow me to give some background:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TruvoDirectories
I'm working for the official Belgian Yellow Pages (part of Truvo), and as you might know in Belgium, we have to deal with 3 official languages (BE-nl, BE-fr, BE-de | the latter is out of scope for this question) and on top of that we also have a large international audience (BE-en). Furthermore, Belgium is very small, meaning that someone living in the French part of Belgium (ex. Liège) easily might look for information in the Dutch part of Belgium (ex. Antwerpen) without having to switch websites/language. Since 1968 (http://info.truvo.be/en/our-company/) we have established 3 different brands, each brand is adapted to a language, each has a clear language specific connotation:
for the BE-nl market: we have the brand "gouden gids"
for the BE-fr market: we have the brand "pages dor"
for the BE-en market we have the brand "golden pages" Logically, this results in 3 websites: www.goudengids.be, www.pagesdor.be, www.goldenpages.be each serving a specific language and containing specific language messages and functionalities, but, off course, serving a part of the content that is similar for all websites regardless of the language.
So we do have following links ex.
http://www.goudengids.be/united-consultants-nv-antwerpen-2000/
http://www.pagesdor.be/united-consultants-nv-antwerpen-2000/
http://www.goldenpages.be/united-consultants-nv-antwerpen-2000/ When I want to stick with the separate brands for the same content, how do I make sure that Google shows the desired url when searching in resp. google.be (dutch), google.be (french) google.be (english)? Kind Regards0