Redirecting 2 established websites to 1 new one.
-
I have 2 websites that I've built up for a few years decent DA. I'm thinking of making one new website and directing the two websites to it. Is Google going to find that suspicious, or will the new site benefit from the DA from both?
-
Note that, in addition to what others have said here, it can often be the case that consolidating two websites in the same industry can result in less traffic than the total the two were receiving previously. This is because it's possible that both were ranking for some of the same queries before the merge, and yet the merge doesn't move the top result up (because the result above is significantly more powerful) and hence the net result for that query is just to remove one result you own from the search result page.
Just a word of caution as you model this impact.
-
No, there isn't an issue with Google when you consolidate 2 sites into one. There is a slight erosion in link equity via 301, but it's nominal. Just make sure the old/new landing pages are closely related and you will be fine.
I know its nerve-racking, but make sure you do yourpyour work and fix any issues after implementation.
When you go live, I typically type site:nameofsite.com in google and click on the legacy link and make sure the old domain goes to the correct page on new site.
-
I guess I wasn't clear. I'm not just killing a website. I have two websites with a lot of content on them and years of organic linking. I have a new website I'm building. I would moe that content to the new website and properly re-direct all the pages to the right URL's on the new site.
The question is will Google not like if I re-direct and consolidate two websites, and their content, to a new website? I'd like to get the power of both websites on the new one.
-
I agree with Joseph. The key to 301's redirects is to redirect to a landing page that is "closely" related. If there is no closely related page, best 404 as the user (as Joseph says) may feel cheated with the 301 and bounce. Also, a blanket 301 to a homepage is rarely a good idea. Yes, Google has no issue w/a 301 that is closely related. Good luck!
-
My Friend,
The way you need to think of this is as a user. If a user gets this redirect, will they feel it is fair, or will they think you redirected them to not a relevant site?
That should guide you because this is the way Google looks at it as well.
Regards,
Joseph Green
-
Thanks for the reply. One of them is very targeted to one of the topics of the website. The other is a more broad area that is loosely connected.
My thought is to point the loosely connected one to either the homepage, or blog homepage of the new site. Then point the more relevant one to the main section of that category.
For example, if my site has a "cars" section, I'm thinking of posting a car blog to that car section of the new site. So the 301 would go to newsite.com/cars.
Will Google not like that idea?
-
Hello Friend,
Are the two websites related to the content of the new site?
If yes, then its perfectly fine to 301 redirect your old website to the new one; that's what redirects are all about.
If it is unrelated, I would not do it.
I wish you all the best with your websites.
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
-
Creating two websites from one and building up traffic to the new domain quickly
A client has an existing successful website that sells niche products - they are well known in their marketplace. They have two sets of key customers, let's call them (a) and (b), that need addressing in different ways to maximise sales. (a) is the more specialist end of the market, where people have complex needs - there are fewer of them but repeat business is likely, and we can talk to them in more technical language. (b) is the layman's end of the market - there is a vast pool of potential customers but they'll be more casual buyers and need to be addressed more in layman's terms. So what they want to do is to take their existing website, and essentially split it into two different websites, one for each market. The one that will use the existing domain, with all the links that have built up over the years pointing to it, will be the site for the more specialist end of the market (a). The domain name suits it better, which is why he wants to use the existing domain with that site and not the other. (b) will be a brand new domain. The client will write new product descriptions across the board so that the two sets of product information are not duplicate. I'd rather he didn't do this at all, because of the risk involved, and the difficulty of building up the traffic to the new site, which is after all the one with the best chance of mass market sales. But given that the client has decided that this is definitely what he wants, does anyone have any thoughts on what the action plan should be?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | helga730 -
New Alternate View Redirection
Hi, We are merging two sites, differentiated by the type of customer (consumer or corporate). Currently we have:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoeuroflorist
www.consumersite.com/product/
www.corporatesite.com/product/ When on the new site, the type of customer can be switched by clicking 'Corporate' or 'Customer' which adds ?user=Business or ?user=Private to the url which then redirects so the URL is the same but certain features have changed. We block ?user=Business and ?user=Private in URLs in robots.txt to prevent duplicating pages. Should we redirect like: www.corporatesite.com/product/ -> www.consumersite.com/product/ Or: www.corporatesite.com/product/ -> www.consumersite.com/product?user=Business (this will then redirect but the parameter is blocked by robots.) I'm concerned redirecting to a URL that is blocked from indexing is an obvious error. Any ideas are welcome. Thanks!0 -
I've got duplicate pages. For example, blog/page/2 is the same as author/admin/page/2\. Is this something I should just ignore, or should I create the author/admin/page2 and then 301 redirect?
I'm going through the crawl report and it says I've got duplicate pages. For example, blog/page/2 is the same as author/admin/page/2/ Now, the author/admin/page/2 I can't even find in WordPress, but it is the same thing as blog/page/2 nonetheless. Is this something I should just ignore, or should I create the author/admin/page2 and then 301 redirect it to blog/page/2?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | shift-inc0 -
Consolidating two separate domains and redirecting towards a new replatformed domain
A client has two different sites selling the same products with the same content, they would like to replatform onto Magento while redirecting those 2 sites to the new URL. The question is, besides monitoring the 301 redirects is there anything else to take into consideration when consolidating two sites into one new site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RocketWeb0 -
Moving Content To Another Website With No Redirect?
I've got a website that has lots of valuable content and tools but it's been hit too hard by both Panda and Penguin. I came to the conclusion that I'd be better off with a new website as this one is going to hell no matter how much time and money I put in it. Had I started a new website the first time it got hit by Penguin, I'd be profitable today. I'd like to move some of that content to this other domain but I don't want to do 301 redirects as I don't want to pass bad link juice. I know I'll lose all links and visitors to the original website but I don't care. My only concern is duplicate content. I was thinking of setting the pages to noindex on the original website and wait until they don't appear in Google's index. Then I'd move them over to the new domain to be indexed again. Do you see any problem with this? Should I rewrite everything instead? I hate spinning content...!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sbrault741 -
Stuck on Page 2 - What Would You Do?!?
My site is : http://goo.gl/JgK1e My main keyword is : Plastic Bins i have been going back and forth between page 1 and 2 for this keyword and i was wondering if any of you could provide any guidance as to why i can't get on the top of page 1, and stay there... My site has been around for a while, we believe we have a great user experience, all unique, fresh content, and the lowest prices... I must be missing out on something major if I cannot get a steady page 1 ranking... Any thoughts? Thanks in advance...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Prime850 -
Is it ok to redirect
Hello my question is presently we holding one .com for our website and i see in analytics some time people typing .es version of our site too.. which is not registered yet. is it ok to buy that .es extension and do a redirect to our .com version ? thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | idreams0 -
Why would the PageRank for all of our websites show the same?
The last time I checked (early this year), the PageRank on the sites I manage varied, with the highest showing as 6. It made sense as the PR6 site has loads of links and has been around for a long time, whereas the other sites hadn't. Now all of our websites are showing the same PageRank - 6, even one that has recently launched and another that has barely any links/traffic or anything to it. I didn't check the PR of that one last time (I'd be surprised if it was 2), but the sites now showing as 6 ranged from PR3 to PR6 back then. We changed server in February...so could this issue be something to do with all of the sites being stored on the same server? It doesn't seem right but it's the only thing I can think of. At the moment, the Domain Authority for these six websites ranges from 27 to 62.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alex-Harford0
