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Hi,

Consolidating sites for manageability and traffic is often a good decision, we did it with some of our smaller sites and saw some good successes with it.

The pros are, as i see it;

• Easy to manage the sites content (if you have an easy to use cm system on the main site)
• Generating unique content for 1 site is easy than generating content for several site and will hopefully lead to a situation where the main site is seen as an authority.
• Consolidation of your traffic should make it easier to target the keywords you know are performing well for you as opposed to having to pull from several different analytics sources
• With your site being transactional it might be easier for you to manage orders on one site than on several depending on how your back end system works?

Cons would be largely around the potential loss of traffic, having gone through a similar consolidation process I think it is best to assume you will save around 85% of your search results, although reports differ on this one. Once you make the switch, you will see an initial drop in traffic but should recover if done correctly.

There are a number of steps involved in doing this effectively:

• Ascertain which of your keywords, and consequently pages, are vital for you to keep. You can do this easily with the keyword/content reports in google analytics.
• I would put in place individual 301s on these pages pointing to most relevant pages on your main site. From experience I would suggest leaving these 301s in place until you start seeing the positions in the SERPs change over to your new results.
• It's probably worth running an OSE report and double checking of any of the external links you have to your smaller sites can be altered to point at the new one - this will probably be more efficient than the 301s.
• Having protected the main pages start focusing on the rest of the pages on your sites. Don't do a blanket 301 as you'll end up with a bunch of 404s from the pages you miss. It'll take much longer to do this page by page but it'll be worth it in the end.
• Finally, in the webmaster accounts of each of your sites there is the option to inform google that your site has moved. Once you're happy with the 301s for each of the smaller sites.

Just a few tips here, more focused on moving one site over to a new domain, but should definitely be considered for a site consolidation too. The google article on moving domains will also be helpful as well:

https://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=83105

Nice little Moz bit on redirections here too if you're not so comfortable with them: http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection

Thanks,

Nigel

Hi Tom,

Just had a quick look over your site using the process we'd normally use at my work to assess why a site might be struggling and I think the link building portion of your SEO efforts is where you should start looking.

You're right in thinking you've got some great links on there such as the one you mentioned from wrexham.gov.uk but you're competing against some much stronger sites, the National Archives for example has a DA of 100. With other sites in the top 3 having DA's of 67 & 69 respectively. This is going to make it difficult for one great link to boost you to the top, you need to have several strong links to bolster your current profile. I would suggest breaking it down into targets of linking domains, from OTE i can see you're on 11 so make your first target 50 and so on.

Technically, i can't see any huge errors with your site. Are there any of the Google Algorithim updates which coincide with the drop you've seen in position?

Nigel J Linton

I saw similar changes to the Data sets in the August update. I received feedback from moz, was that with the July data set they were crawling deeper into some of the larger (and more trusted) domains which was, in some cases, producing unusual results. For example, we had links coming from domains such as Warnerbros.com, which have no trace of a link to us.

I think the latest update has moved to rectify these issues but at the same time crawled a wider range of results giving a more accurate picture of link graphs for pages. I would suggest that comparing Data month and month to yourself is not a useful as mapping the changes your competitors are having i.e. with Seomoz making the great changes they do to make their metrics reflective of what matters in the SERPs the data will change month on month but if you are looking at how your competitors shift as well you'll get an idea as to how you perform.

I would also suggest using several tools, (whilst linkscape is pretty darn awesome) it's always worth getting a full picture of the link metrics by checking linking domains in webmaster tools, yahoo site explorer, bing tools, majestic seo etc.

In short I don't think there are serious issues with the data but it would be worth checking which domains you've lost and which you've gained, just to be safe.

Hi Erica,

I work for a footwear retailer and we have a similar problem when working out how to categorize the extra items  and its always something we have a bit of discussion about.

I think the first check would be a quick logic one, does it feel like the products can be easily grouped? For example I can see there are a few pairs of gloves/warmers that seems like a logic way people would want to shop.

The next step we normally look at is search data, even if you aren't planning on doing seo if there is sufficient search volume around, for example, a exoffico belt - chances are people will want to view them as a category.

You've got quite a nice product display for a single item so I wouldn't say that the individual items need an extra category. However, what we've done on our site is, when we know we only have the item for a short season the category page is created but when the product is out of stock it becomes a content pages with information about the product and the ability to order later if required (always a great place to cross sell)

Lastly we look at how many clicks in takes the user to buy the item, for example if they have to click womens, accessories, other, belts, their item and then purchase they've got to be showing real intent for purchase. In some cases it's best to raise those difficult items closer to the top of your site.

Our adwords campaigns also play a small part in this decision too, depends if you're running those or not.

Sorry it wasn't a very concise response but hope it helped in someway!

Hi Sally,

From past advice and experience I would suggest reducing this to 1. There are reasons for this, firstly; this is often likened to cloaking which is a dubious tactic which google doesn't normally look to kindly on. We also saw quite a bit of link juice bleed out by using 2 redirects on one page.

Secondly, it will probably end up affecting the user experience because the load time of the page (from their perspective) will be greater as they are sent to two separate pages before they arrive at the desired page.

Thirdly, this is more from personal experience, having a page with multiple 301s can be difficult to manage (we had a few instances of team members getting confused as to which page was the right one). This sounds simple but once you have a few pages like this and have had a long day of web design it's easy to make little mistakes.

I wouldn't take these points as gospel, just some advice from past experience.

I'm glad to hear it's happening else where, it doesn't appear to be negatively affecting the SERPs which is a good thing, but I'd really like to know what's causing it.

I've had a look in Webmaster tools and can see no indication there, thought there maybe something in the 'html suggestions' section.

Thanks for the reposne Anthony!

I'll look into it. But would that mean that there is a site somewhere linking to multiple pages on our site with links strong enough to overpower the Title ? it's possible just seems unlikely to be doing across so many different pages.

Have you conducted a keyword research for the keywords that do have a traffic in your region?

You can select South Africa as a location in Google Traffic Estimator. Perhaps it's worth looking in there for some opportunities? It seems there is some traffic for the long tail phrases surrounding website desginers?

Hi Simon,

Do you have analytics tracking set up for your website? This will be the easiest way of working out which keywords are currently converting but have low traffic so you can focus your efforts on those.

In order to find these keywords you will need to go to Traffic Sources > Keywords. These will be split into paid and non-paid. The non-paid will be displaying the organic searches that are sending traffic, with ecommerce tracking set up correctly you'll be able to see which keywords are converting.

In terms of keywords that you are not currently ranking for but you wish to see the conversion rates for, this is quite difficult as conversion rates will vary from site to site. It is therefore difficult to produce a global list.

Hope this was of some help!

I too work with a lot of bloggers who are given products to review for the purpose of link building and content.

The UK has similar legislation which states the competition (or review)  was sponsored and the relation between the blogger and the company is clear.

In terms of a 'no-follow' i haven't come across anything which states that the link must be 'no-follow'. I don't think these communities (such as the FCC) have come to understand the relevance of no vs do follow links, so I'd keep going with the follow links.

Hi Erica,

I work for a footwear retailer and we have a similar problem when working out how to categorize the extra items  and its always something we have a bit of discussion about.

I think the first check would be a quick logic one, does it feel like the products can be easily grouped? For example I can see there are a few pairs of gloves/warmers that seems like a logic way people would want to shop.

The next step we normally look at is search data, even if you aren't planning on doing seo if there is sufficient search volume around, for example, a exoffico belt - chances are people will want to view them as a category.

You've got quite a nice product display for a single item so I wouldn't say that the individual items need an extra category. However, what we've done on our site is, when we know we only have the item for a short season the category page is created but when the product is out of stock it becomes a content pages with information about the product and the ability to order later if required (always a great place to cross sell)

Lastly we look at how many clicks in takes the user to buy the item, for example if they have to click womens, accessories, other, belts, their item and then purchase they've got to be showing real intent for purchase. In some cases it's best to raise those difficult items closer to the top of your site.

Our adwords campaigns also play a small part in this decision too, depends if you're running those or not.

Sorry it wasn't a very concise response but hope it helped in someway!

Hi Tom,

Just had a quick look over your site using the process we'd normally use at my work to assess why a site might be struggling and I think the link building portion of your SEO efforts is where you should start looking.

You're right in thinking you've got some great links on there such as the one you mentioned from wrexham.gov.uk but you're competing against some much stronger sites, the National Archives for example has a DA of 100. With other sites in the top 3 having DA's of 67 & 69 respectively. This is going to make it difficult for one great link to boost you to the top, you need to have several strong links to bolster your current profile. I would suggest breaking it down into targets of linking domains, from OTE i can see you're on 11 so make your first target 50 and so on.

Technically, i can't see any huge errors with your site. Are there any of the Google Algorithim updates which coincide with the drop you've seen in position?

Nigel J Linton

Thanks for the reposne Anthony!

I'll look into it. But would that mean that there is a site somewhere linking to multiple pages on our site with links strong enough to overpower the Title ? it's possible just seems unlikely to be doing across so many different pages.

The latest linkscape update was done on the 27th of July so this was probably the updated where you saw the drop in the links being counted.

Our domain has experienced a drop in links but not as dramatic as the falls you're experiencing. Are the drops in links mirrored by a similar loss in linking root domains? i.e. how many actual sites have stopped linking (or possibly stopped being picked up by moz bar) ?

Have you conducted a keyword research for the keywords that do have a traffic in your region?

You can select South Africa as a location in Google Traffic Estimator. Perhaps it's worth looking in there for some opportunities? It seems there is some traffic for the long tail phrases surrounding website desginers?

The impact of the users interaction with the search results will be interesting to see.

I'm certainly interested to see how the sub domain search plays out. It will be interesting to see how the search result pages perform in the  serps.

If we go ahead i'll keep the mozers up to date with the effect.

I too work with a lot of bloggers who are given products to review for the purpose of link building and content.

The UK has similar legislation which states the competition (or review)  was sponsored and the relation between the blogger and the company is clear.

In terms of a 'no-follow' i haven't come across anything which states that the link must be 'no-follow'. I don't think these communities (such as the FCC) have come to understand the relevance of no vs do follow links, so I'd keep going with the follow links.

I saw similar changes to the Data sets in the August update. I received feedback from moz, was that with the July data set they were crawling deeper into some of the larger (and more trusted) domains which was, in some cases, producing unusual results. For example, we had links coming from domains such as Warnerbros.com, which have no trace of a link to us.

I think the latest update has moved to rectify these issues but at the same time crawled a wider range of results giving a more accurate picture of link graphs for pages. I would suggest that comparing Data month and month to yourself is not a useful as mapping the changes your competitors are having i.e. with Seomoz making the great changes they do to make their metrics reflective of what matters in the SERPs the data will change month on month but if you are looking at how your competitors shift as well you'll get an idea as to how you perform.

I would also suggest using several tools, (whilst linkscape is pretty darn awesome) it's always worth getting a full picture of the link metrics by checking linking domains in webmaster tools, yahoo site explorer, bing tools, majestic seo etc.

In short I don't think there are serious issues with the data but it would be worth checking which domains you've lost and which you've gained, just to be safe.

Hi,

Consolidating sites for manageability and traffic is often a good decision, we did it with some of our smaller sites and saw some good successes with it.

The pros are, as i see it;

• Easy to manage the sites content (if you have an easy to use cm system on the main site)
• Generating unique content for 1 site is easy than generating content for several site and will hopefully lead to a situation where the main site is seen as an authority.
• Consolidation of your traffic should make it easier to target the keywords you know are performing well for you as opposed to having to pull from several different analytics sources
• With your site being transactional it might be easier for you to manage orders on one site than on several depending on how your back end system works?

Cons would be largely around the potential loss of traffic, having gone through a similar consolidation process I think it is best to assume you will save around 85% of your search results, although reports differ on this one. Once you make the switch, you will see an initial drop in traffic but should recover if done correctly.

There are a number of steps involved in doing this effectively:

• Ascertain which of your keywords, and consequently pages, are vital for you to keep. You can do this easily with the keyword/content reports in google analytics.
• I would put in place individual 301s on these pages pointing to most relevant pages on your main site. From experience I would suggest leaving these 301s in place until you start seeing the positions in the SERPs change over to your new results.
• It's probably worth running an OSE report and double checking of any of the external links you have to your smaller sites can be altered to point at the new one - this will probably be more efficient than the 301s.
• Having protected the main pages start focusing on the rest of the pages on your sites. Don't do a blanket 301 as you'll end up with a bunch of 404s from the pages you miss. It'll take much longer to do this page by page but it'll be worth it in the end.
• Finally, in the webmaster accounts of each of your sites there is the option to inform google that your site has moved. Once you're happy with the 301s for each of the smaller sites.

Just a few tips here, more focused on moving one site over to a new domain, but should definitely be considered for a site consolidation too. The google article on moving domains will also be helpful as well:

https://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=83105

Nice little Moz bit on redirections here too if you're not so comfortable with them: http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection

Thanks,

Nigel