Site Merge Strategy: Choosing Target Pages for 301 Redirects

[inhouseseo]

I am going to be merging two sites. One is a niche site, and it is being merged with the main site.

I am going to be doing 301 redirects to the main site. My question is, what is the best way of redirecting section/category pages in order to maximize SEO benefits. I will be redirecting product to product pages. The questions only concerns sections/categories.

Option 1:

Direct each section/category to the most closely matched category on the main site. For example, vintage-t-shirts would go to vintage-t-shirt on main site.

Option 2:

Point as many section/category pages to larger category on main site with selected filters. We have filtered navigation on our site. So if you wanted to see vintage t-shirts, you could go to the vintage t-shirt category, OR you could go to t-shirts and select "vintage" under style filter. In the example above, the vintage-t-shirt section from the niche site would point to t-shirts page with vintage filter selected (something like t-shirts/#/?_=1&filter.style=vintage).

With option 2, I would be pointing more links to a main category page on the main site.

• I would likely have that page rank higher, because more links are pointing to it.

• I may have a better overall user experience, because if the customer decides to browse another style of t-shirt, they can simply unselect the filter and make other selections.

Questions:

• Which of these options is better as far as: (1) SEO, (2) User experience

• If I go with option 2, the drawback is that the page titles will all be the same (i.e vintage-t-shirts pointing to the page with filter selected would have "t-shirts" as page title instead of a more targeted page with page title "vintage t-shirts." I believe a workaround would be to pull filter values from the URL and append them to the page title. That way page title for URL t-shirts/#/?=1&filter.style=vintage_ would be something like "vintage, t-shirts." Is this the appropriate way to deal with it?

Any thoughts, suggestions, shared experiences would be appreciated.

[KristinaKledzik]

Typically, no. You can see a discussion on this on another Moz Q&A here. There are exceptions to this rule, like when you're using AJAX and have a #!, but in your case, I'm pretty sure Google would ignore the filtered version of the page.

[inhouseseo]

When a filter is selected, a # is added right after the .html. You're saying that this page won't even be indexed?

[KristinaKledzik]

Hello there!

This isn't a question that we can answer for you definitively, but I think I can help you figure out the best method here.

(Before we start, I want to clear something up: if you use a # in your URLs, Google only indexes the page as it's loaded with the URL before the #. So, if you make the page title change for t-shirts/#/?=1&filter.style=vintage_, Google won't even see that.)

To restate your question, and make sure I'm understanding you correctly: you're migrating a smaller site into a larger site. Your options are:

1. The standard option, redirect pages to the most similar page on the bigger site
2. A (slightly sneaky) SEO option, where you redirect pages to pages that are similar enough for good user experience, but are pushing link equity to the pages that need it.

My answer is: go with option #1 unless you can prove that option #2 will have an impact on rankings for the right pages.

To determine if you can make an impact, map out which pages you'd like to redirect where. For simplicity sake, assume that all inbound links to oldsite.com/vintage-tshirts and oldsite.com/hipster-tshirts will transfer full equity to biggersite.com/tshirts. Add those links to the current count of inbound links to biggersite.com/tshirts. Then, go through the top keywords you want to rank for, and see if this new number of links will cause your rankings to increase. (I like to use the Mozbar and actually search for whatever keyword I'm targeting, and look at the number of inbound links and the total DA of competing sites.)

Be sure to look for potential increases in traffic if you send oldsite.com/vintage-tshirts to biggersite.com/vintage-tshirts too - typically, you get more conversions for pages that are already better targeted to the query.

There's definitely some wiggle room here. If you think that the new inbound links are significant but they won't actually get you up a ranking, go ahead and go with option #2. If you find that you don't have a whole lot of inbound links to oldsite.com/vintage-tshirts, though, this probably isn't worth you time.

Hope this helps!

Kristina

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

I would check out Moz's migration resource as it has a lot of great tips for you to consider and check off.

I would also check out Google's Move your site resource, as they have best practices for you to follow as well.

Lastly, I would check out Rand's Whiteboard Friday regarding this topic called Should I Rebrand and Redirect My Site? Should I Consolidate Multiple Sites/Brands?

Whatever you do, focus on the user and what would work best for them. SEO and appeasing the search engines is super important as well, but if you figure out what works best for your audience and their experience on your website, then the search engines are usually cool with what you do, as long as your actions fall within their best practices in the resources above. Usually redirecting pages to their most relevant new page is the best way to go.

I would also make sure you conduct a proper backlink audit and figured out if there are any backlinks to update, remove, or disavow.

Hope this all helps! Good luck!