Merging 3 websites into 1

[Andy-Halliday]

Hi

I was wondering if someone can give me a bit of advice - outside of my full time job I run three websites - all in the same area, but all do three different things

1. Directory (DA19)

2. Blog (DA 23)

3. Products (DA35)

I want to merger all three website into one and all be on one website (rather do it now than keep working on three websites). I have included the DAs of each site (  I know they are not amazing, but i've only recently started working on two of them), but I want to place all three websites under the Blog url.

Regarding 301's of the pages, would I be better doing at the top level and 301 all the pages to the home page, or spending the time and 301 the old product page for instance to the new product page - this is a much bigger project, but what are the potential gains.

Is there anything else I should consider when switching the sites - all three are wordpress sites (I know it has its limitations but they are easy to create).

Thanks in Advance

Andy

[JaneCopland]

Hi,

Going to agree with Fuel Interactive here - the best practice is to redirect page-by-page if you are combining sites, unless you are set on deleting / consolidating content from the merged sites into one smaller, tidier website. In that case, it's still best practice to redirect to the most appropriate page if one exists, rather than just to the home page.

It can be a real pain to go through a consolidation / redirection process like this, so only do this if it's really necessary and will likely cause a big uplift in either performance or your ability to manage each area of the business.

Dave is right that IIS can do a URL by URL redirect for you, or you can do this in your .htaccess file if you are using an Apache server as opposed to a Microsoft IIS server.

[Fuel]

"Regarding 301's of the pages, would I be better doing at the top level and 301 all the pages to the home page, or spending the time and 301 the old product page for instance to the new product page - this is a much bigger project, but what are the potential gains."

From a user stand point and a search engine stand point, I feel it would be better to take the time to redirect each product page from the old site to the corresponding product page on the new site. I am not sure if there is an easy way to automate this, but it is definitely the route to go versus just sending all of the pages to the home page. Think of it from a user point of view. If there was a link to a product on the old site out there and someone clicks expecting more information on that product and then gets redirected to a homepage they will not find what they are looking for and might just bounce off the site. However, bringing them to the appropriate page will keep the user on the site longer and might ultimately end in a conversion (not sure what vertical you are in, I associated products with retail). This would ultimately send positive signals to search engines on the placements of those redirects. Though it might not seem like an issue for a single page or even a few pages, implemented across the board this could make a huge difference.

Hope that helps.

[danwebman]

On IIS you have the ability to redirect the whole domain with a HTTP ReDirect 301 which also takes care of URIs with something like :-

Redirect requests to this destination : http://www.eriks.co.uk/$S$Q

This then takes anything that follows and re-maps to the same URI on the new page. (assuming and providing the URI's are going to be the same!)

The other option would be 301 redirects to avoid the SEO hit being as harsh.

I have combined a number of sites in the last 12 months in this way.

Good luck!

[kwoolf]

Hi Andy,

Interesting project. So you want a Wordpress multisite or do you want to move all your content to a single domain? It would help if we could get your URL to see what's going on. Moving sites is painful, especially because you will undoubtedly take a hit in the rankings for awhile.

After thinking about this for just a few minutes, I wonder why you need to put all the content from each site under blog. Why not keep products, directory and blog? And just after writing that question, now I know I need more details in order to give you sound advice. Post back with specific domains if you still need help.

Cheers!