Merging Domains... Sub-domains, Directories or Seperate Sites?
-
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.
-
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
-
I agree with what you are thinking. The biggest effect would be if you can move them all onto one domain name (sub-folders) and setup 301 redirects. Keep hosting those domains forever since the 301s would stay only as long as you own the domains and continue to host them to serve the 301.
Moving them to sub-domains might be minimal / zero effect. I only see risk in doing that.
Ask yourself: Does it help the users in integrating all the content into one big website ?
-
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?
-
Subdomains are often viewed by google as different domains. That means, links that hit one of them benefit that subdomain but transfer fractional benefit to other subdomains and to the root.
If this was my project I would use folders instead of subdomains. Your designer can make them look unique if that is needed, however, with them all being in the root directory all of the incoming links will benefit the entire site.
In early 2011 I redirected two subdomains of a busy site (one more powerful than the root domain) into folders and the results have been kickass. Kickass.
-
As long as your content is well structured amongst the sub-domains and root domain I can't see why there would be any issues. When making the change ensure that you:
- Tell Google that the URL is moving (do this via Google Webmaster Tools)
- Add permanent 301 redirects from the old URLs and point to their respective URLs on the new domain (this is to ensure that any backlinks the old websites had will pass some link juice through)
- Don't stop hosting the old domains for say 6 months.
- Run a backlink check on the old URLs and try get those websites (provided they are of good quality) to update the link to the new sub-domain. For those that don't update the 301 redirect will help.
Have fun!
Davinia
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
-
Impending Site Merge - Ideal Time Frame
Hello Moz Community :)**Back Story:**For the past 8 years, we have been running our main e-commerce site on Magento 1For the past year, we have been building out a new far superior version on Magento 2The new Magento 2 site is essentially done we have a couple little last tiny tweaks/improvements to complete. All signs point to it being 100% done by January 31 - 2019. The new site is currently totally functional and fully operational you could complete a checkout no problem. We currently have the site blocked from being crawled. Although we have rewritten all the site content & taken all new photos we've been concerned with duplicate content issues.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Shop-Sq
I have attached an image that is a very good representation of our average sales pattern in a typical year. We are a seasonal business so there are big highs and lows. **Concerns:**My hopes were to launch the site around March - 1 2019. I have to 301s meticulously prepared in a spreadsheet and ready to go. My concern though is making this change right before busy season is about to hit. On the other hand though there really never is an ideal time to make the change as cash flow is equally important if not more important during the slow season.Ideally, I would allow the site to be crawled and run them both in tandem for a while but I'm concerned about potential duplicate content issues even though the content has been significantly altered.**Main Question:**What's my best bet?1) Do the 301 in March and hope for the best2) Allow the site to be indexed - risk duplicate content problems and run them both in tandem for a while.Final thoughts.The old site is really starting to fall apart. Every day I keep it open and running we steal resources from moving forward with the new site.-Any thoughts, direction, suggestions or input would be greatly appreciated9wDl7lD0 -
Gradual Increase in Domain Authority After Domain Migration But No Improvement in Organic Traffic Yet
We migrated our domain in early April and simultaneously added an SSL certificate. Everything was done by the books. All redirects implemented perfectly, very few errors. Google notified via Search Console. Despite all steps being done perfectly our domain authority dropped from 24 to 8. Organic traffic dropped from about 80 per day to about 10. Each month domain authority increases by 2 or 3. We are now back up to a DA of 16. But no improvement in organic traffic yet. At what point should organic traffic start to return? Hopefully the consistent improvement in DA is a good sign. I have been told that adding SSL and moving the domain at the same time was a very bad idea. We are starting link building next week. Hopefully that will help further. Any ideas as to when this situation will improve? Needless to say it has been awful for our business.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
Is it posible to improve site rankings working only with an other site?
Hi everyone, i´ll try to explain a situation is happening to me, i´m goint to try to explain the case (im writing the sites without links for explication purposes. Site 1: Adventurerooms Site 2: Adventureroomsmallorca Site 3: Adventureroomsmadrid (the new site) What happen is that at first there was only Adventurerooms and Adventureroomsmallorca, Adventurerooms was for Madrid and linked to the one in Mallorca too, was kind of giving the information for Madrid but in first page split with a link to Mallorca. In a new strategy we create Adventureroomsmadrid for Madrid, and leave Adventurerooms for Spain (with links to Adventureroomsmadrid and Adventureroomsmallorca. We redirect the info for Madrid in Adventurerooms to Adventureroomsmadrid with 301 redirections. We work during this 3 months in Adventureroomsmadrid making content in the blog, and improving (now Adventureroomsmadrid is Moz 15 (perhaps even more), and Adventurerooms is Moz 10. Surprising Adventurerooms is getting better in its search rankings, even when we took away content from it and even without working well. Adventureroomsmadrid is also improving but not as much as Adventurerooms (i know that is a new site, only 3 months), but Adventurerooms gets better results with no content and only DA of 10. I hope i´ve explain the case with my english so the question is: "Is it posible to improve site rankings working only with an other site?" Thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | webtematica0 -
Review of our site
Hi Moz-Fans 🙂 I'm doing SEO for about a year now and have a new site to which I do not know where to improve any further. The main keyword is "Webdesign Freiburg" and the site is werkzeug - kasten . com Anyone want to have a look into and tell me what might bring us from page 2 to page 1 on google? Thanks a lot Marc
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RWW0 -
Site Migration of 4 sites into 1?
Hi Guys, I have a massive project involving a migration of 4 sites into 1. 4 sites include: **www.MainSite.com ** www.E-commerce.com www.Membership.com www.ResearchStudy.com Goal of this project is to have 1-4 regrouped into Main Site I will be following the best practice from this post https://mza.bundledseo.com/blog/web-site-migration-guide-tips-for-seos which has an awesome checklist. I am actually about to start Phase 3: URL redirect mapping. Because all of these sites have hundreds of duplicates, I figured I should first resolve the Main Site dup issues before creating the URL redirect mapping but what about the other domains (2,3,4) though? Should I first resolve the Dup issues on those ones as well or it is not necessary since they will be pointing into the Main Site new domain? I want to make sure I don't overwork the programming team and myself. Thanks For sharing your expertise and any tips on how should I move forward with this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Site rankings down
Our site is over 10 years old and has consistently ranked highly in google.co.uk for over 100 key phrases. Until the middle of April, we were 7th for 'nuts and bolts' and 5th for 'bolts and nuts' - we have been around these positions for 5-6 years easily now. Our rankings dropped mid-April, but now (presumably as a result of Penguin 2.0), we've seen larger decreases across the board. We are now 5th page on 'nuts and bolts', and second page on 'bolts and nuts'. Can anyone please shed any light on this? Although we'd fallen some before Penguin 2.0, we've fallen quite a bit further since. So I'm wondering if it's that. We do still rank well on our more specialised terms though - 'imperial bolts', 'bsw bolts', 'bsf bolts', we're still top 5. We've lost out with the more generic terms. In the past we did a bit of (relevant) blog commenting and obtained some business directory links, before realising the gain was tiny if at all. Are those likely to be the issue? I'm guessing so. It's hard to know which to get rid of though! Now, I use social media sparingly, just Facebook, Twitter and G+. The only linkbuilding I do now is by sending polite emails to people who run classic car clubs that would use our bolts, stuff like that. I've had a decent response from that, and a few have become customers directly. Here's our link profile if anyone would be kind enough as to have a look: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.thomassmithfasteners.com Also, SEOMOZ says we have too many links on our homepage (107) - the dropdown navigation is the culprit here. Should I simply get rid of the dropdown and take users to the categories? Any advice here would be appreciated before I make changes! If anyone wants to take a look at the site, the URL is in the link profile above - I'm terrified of posting links anywhere now! Thanks for your time, and I'd be very grateful for any advice. Best Regards, Stephen
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | stephenshone1 -
Consolidating MANY separate domains into a much better, single URL: Should I point a landing page or redirect to the new site?
I am consolidating a site for a client who previously, and very foolishly, broke up their domains like so: companyparis.com companyflorence.com companyrome.com etc... I am now done with the new site, which will be at: company.eu with pages as appropriate: company.eu/paris company.eu/florence company.eu/rome This domain, although not entirely new, does not have much authority or rank. In terms of SEO and link-building, is it better to redirect the old domain to the specific page on the new domain: companyparis.com --> company.eu/paris or... is it better to put a landing page at the old domain LINKING to the page on the new domain: companyparis.com --> landing page linking to --> company.eu/paris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | thongly0 -
Should I 301 a penalized domain to another domains subfolder?
I have a niche domain seems to have been hit by Penguin. It had very good rankings before the update, and I think at least a good part of the penalty might be due to overoptimized anchor text. So here is the question; If I decide to take this site down, should I 301 the entire domain to a relevant sub-folder of another site? i.e comtemporaryfurniture.com to domain.com/category/modern-furniture.html Will the penalty get passed onto the new domain? If the penalty is partly due to anchor text, then pointing it to another site's subfolder would mean the tartget URL has more varied anchor text and could boost rankings.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | inhouseseo0