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Ok, thanks again. BIG HELP!!

Robert, thanks. That definitely answers my question. The biggest thing was whether or not users can access rootdomain.com or if that gets redirected to the new directory as well.

If I understand your answer, you're saying leave the root domain or index page, etc. up there, redirect the content to the new directories and just stop updating the old domain... Right?

Thanks!

Ok, thanks for the answer...

Do you think I should 301 the root domains or just 301 the content pages?

Yes a well optimized Google Places page can have a huge impact on getting local query traffic.

Hope you get it worked out. Good luck!

Do you have a Google Places account? Is it their website or their Google Places listing that is ranking for the keyword? Do you have "Web Design Memphis" or a similar phrase on your homepage title tag? Do you use that phrase on your site?

I've found including all of the geo information in the footer generally works well. Creating a link between your Google Places account and your web page could help as well.

Hello,

My company has four websites in the same vertical and we're planning to integrate them all on our main company site.

So instead of www.siteone.com, www.sitetwo.com, www.sitethree.com, etc.

It would be www.branddomain.com/site-one, www.branddomain.com/site-two, etc.

I have a few questions...

Should we redirect the old domains to the new directories or leave the old domains and stop updating them with new content... Then have the old content, links, etc. 301 to the same content on the new site?

Should we literally move all of the content to the new directories?

Any tips are appreciated. It's probably pretty obvious that I don't have a ton of technical skills... my development team will be doing the heavy lifting. I just want to be sure we do this correctly from an SEO perspective!

Thanks for the help, please let me know if I can clarify anything.

E

Thanks for the reply. Both answers show that there is no harm here and potentially a lot of benefits.

Great tips, thanks. And the percentage sign... never thought about that.

My editorial team won't budge with their headlines which are excruciatingly vague ... But I have managed to convince them to let me optimize the title tags and the URLs.

Is this sub-optimal or are there some benefits to having a title tag that varies from the page headline or what our dev team calls the "reader friendly" title?

For example...

Their headline: Increase Your Retirement by 20% with This Safe, Simple Strategy

My title tag: Compound Returns: How to Increase Your Retirement 20%

Thanks for the help,

E

Last time I saw Matt Cutts speak he said every search result is personalized, logged in or not. They use a lot of different identifiers to serve results. So yes, computer to computer the results can and will vary.

This is a good reason putting too much emphasis on rankings can be problematic.

If you want to check rankings, I recommend using a rank checker tool like the one Aaron Wall offers... http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/rank-checker

It could be there hasn't been a PR update since the pages received their last grade. And like CMC-SD said... Low PR doesn't necessarily mean anything negative. If you have a good trafficked page and it's converting - forget about chasing PR.

I've had sites that have been PR3 and PR4 for years and drive a ton of high-value, converting traffic from the SERPs and rank for all kinds of fat head, competitive phrases.

Thanks for the reply.

I think at the end of the day, yes it does help the user to have it all in one place.

And thanks for reiterating what I already thought... directories are better than sub-domains.

To be honest, this article is what had me questioning sub-directories in the first place: http://www.seobook.com/subdomains-google-panda

Thanks for the reply.

I guess my biggest concerns are getting the biggest SEO bump I can by consolidating this content, but avoid any content farm penalties.

I was thinking subdomains would be safer, but provide the little to no SEO value.

Thanks again, that's a nice little checklist for moving domains.

Thanks for the reply. Yes, that was my thinking as well.

I have been concerned that I would be in essence creating a content farm because like I mentioned, these sites have hundreds or thousands of articles on them. And they publish 1-3 articles a day on average.

So you did this in early 2011 and found no ill effects from Panda?

Hello!

I am hoping you can help me decide the best path to take here...

A little background:

I'm moving to a new company that has three old domains (the oldest is 10 years old), which get a lot of traffic from their e-letters. Until recently they have not cared about SEO. So the websites have some structural, coding, URL and other issues. The sites are indexed, but have a problem getting crawled and/or indexed for new content - haven't delved into this yet but am certain I will be able to fix any of these issues.

These three domains are PR4, PR4, PR5 and contain hundreds of unique articles.

Here's the question...

They want to move these three sites **to their main company site (PR4) and create sub domains for each one. **

I am wondering if this is a good idea or not. I have merged sites before (creating categories and/or directories) and the end result is that the ONE big site, is much for effective than TWO smaller, less authoritative sites. But the sub domain idea is something I am unsure about from an SEO perspective.

Should we do this with sub domains? Or do you think we should keep the sites separate? How do Panda and Penguin play into this?

Thanks in advance for the help!

SD

P.S. I'm not a huge advocate in using PR as a measurement tool, but since I can't reveal the actual domains, I figured I would list it as a reference point.