Merging 4 websites into one for a new site release (301 question)
-
Hi guys and girls, I have a client that has 4 very outdated websites with about 50 pages on each. They are made up like: 1 brand group and 3 for each individual key service they offer, so let's call them: brand.com (A) brand-service-1.com (B) brand-service-2.com (C) brand-service-3.com (D) We've rebuilt the main site and aggregated all the content from the others (99% re-written). Am I correct in thinking the process for the new lauch would be: 1. Launch the new site on brand.com (A) and 301 all the old brand.com (A) pages to the related pages on the new site. 2. Redirect the other websites (B,C,D) on a domain level to the new site on the brand.com (A) domain. 3. Clean up the old URL's, sitemaps, errors in Google WMT Is this right? Anything I missed/better practices? I was also wondering if I should redirect B,C,D in stages, or use page level redirects.
-
Only do 301 if the other sites have great value, you say that you have merged all content on 1 site an rewritten it? Google will automatic see the new content, the only reason i think you should do a 301 is if the other sites have a PR higher than 3 or 4, pr 2 and 1 are EASY to get. So take the new uniq content your wrote, combine each site with your different keywords. More on same page are good for results. You dont need a landing page for each keyword.
I would do this:
Check the PR and Alexa for all the sites, figure out if the traffic is real customers or just scans. There is no point in redirecting scan bots to new site, they will come automatic.
Then i would do the 301 from Google Webmaster Tools and make sure that they all go to front site of brand.com site. But only if they have anything to offer for your new site.
-
Link related items and pages from the old sites to related items or pages on the new site. If there are no pages on the new site related to an old topic, redirect them to the home page of the new site if they have pagerank and weight. Do a URL removal in GWT if they do not.
-
I use page-level redirects whenever possible. Better for Google and better for users. Besides that, sounds like you have a pretty sound strategy there.
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
-
Can one back-link fluctuates ranking of website with thousands of back-links?
It happend to our website. We have seen major ranking fluctuations for our website because of one back-link. What kind of links those can be? Why Google is not stopping them even though they claim that such back-links will be taken care of?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Strange rankings on new website
HI All My website is 10 years old, and has decent rankings. The domain is www.advanced-driving.co.uk I have recently had a major overhaul of the site, before it was very outdated, with lots of duplicated content. My main keywords are "advanced driving course" and "advanced driving courses" both of which I am on page 1. However, since I have been live with new site - (5 days) I am not ranking for some easy win keywords. I have submitted new content thought webmaster tools, and whilst some content is ranking, others are not. The content not ranking is fresh and unique ( have used copyscape on all new pages). For example my homepage is on page 1 for "advanced driving courses london" - around rank 6. So I hand made some content titled advanced driving courses london to provide more of an exact match, outlining our courses in London and the routes we take - http://www.advanced-driving.co.uk/defensive-advanced-driving-courses-london/ However, this page which is unique does not rank at all....I have done this with another website and it worked well, but google is not understanding this at all. Also I am now on page 1 for "advanced driving course" but not for "advanced driving courses" - well I am but the page for the plural keyword is a page not really related - surely Googles semantic search should realise course and courses are the same! I suspect that Google is still getting used to my new website? No errors or anything in Webmaster tools... Can anyone confirm this - or outline if I have done something awful..!! Thanks Rob
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | robert780 -
How to Submit My new Website in All Search Engines
Hello Everyone, Can Any body help to suggest Good software, or Any other to easily Submit my website , to All Search Engines ? ? Any expert Can help please, Thanx in Advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | falguniinnovative0 -
Guest Posting Campaign For New Site
Hi looking at doing a large guest post campaign for a new site (no authority) of mine. In total the plan is to distribute 50 high quality articles to other blogs in the same vertical. The goal is to kick start my link building campaign doing this. However I know that Google has been slamming down on guest posts: http://searchengineland.com/guest-post-google-penalty-187707 AND https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/guest-blogging/ What are some ways of doing guest posting and reducing the risk. Will keeping anchor-text brand based, be the best option? Kind Regards, Mark
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mikey0081 -
301 Redirecting an Entire Site
I have a question which has had me thinking for hours..... If SITE A is ranking well on a number of search phrases and you 301 that site to another (SITE B). The site will change on the Google SERPs to the site which you've re-directed to... In this case SITE B. But how do you maintain the rankings of SITE A?. Do you keep the rankings of SITE A forever? Or will your rankings of SITE A (now SITE B) gradually slip as other sites rank higher? As you can no longer edit SITE A does Google take into consideration the content on SITE B and no longer take anything that SITE A had to offer into consideration? SITE B has simply replaced it in the SERPs??...... Please can anybody help? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | karl620 -
Transfer link juice from old to new site
Hi seomozzers, The design team is building a new website for one of our clients. My role is to make sure all the link juice is kept. My first question is, should I just make 301s or is there another technique to preserve all the link juice from the old to new site that I should be focusing on? Second Question is that ok to transfer link juice using dev urls like www.dev2.example.com (new site) or 182.3456.2333? or should I wait the creation of real urls to do link juice transfer? Thank you 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Web site Migration from one server to another does cause any impact in SEO rankings?
Dear Seomoz members, We are going to migrate our website to different server location(new data center). does this impact on our SEO rankings? If so what and all checklist i have to do....to retain my SEO rankings. Regards, kathiravan subbiah Caratlane.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kathiravan0 -
Best approach to launch a new site with new urls - same domain
www.sierratradingpost.com We have a high volume e-commerce website with over 15K items, an average of 150K visits per day and 12.6 pages per visit. We are launching a new website this spring which is currently on a beta sub domain and we are looking for the best strategy that preserves our current search rankings while throttling traffic (possibly 25% per week) to measure results. The new site will be soft launched as we plan to slowly migrate traffic to it via a load balancer. This way we can monitor performance of the new site while still having the old site as a backup. Only when we are fully comfortable with the new site will we submit the 301 redirects and migrate everyone over to the new site. We will have a month or so of running both sites. Except for the homepage the URL structure for the new site is different than the old site. What is our best strategy so we don’t lose ranking on the old site and start earning ranking on the new site, while avoiding duplicate content and cloaking issues? Here is what we got back from a Google post which may highlight our concerns better: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=62d0a16c4702a17d&hl=en&fid=62d0a16c4702a17d00049b67b51500a6 Thank You, sincerely, Stephan Woo Cude SEO Specialist scude@sierratradingpost.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | STPseo0