Merging Domains
-
Hi, Everyone,
My company is currently working with a client that has multiple websites and is interested in merging them into one. One is a primary corporate site, the other is a site for a single line of products. They obviously want to merge the product site into the corporate site. The interesting thing is that the product site outperforms the corporate site. It has the highest traffic, and it has far more links/linking domains, a higher domain authority (although only by two points), and much more social activity. However, their reasons for wanting to merge the two are completely valid - less management, URL would match print collateral, etc.
They're asking our opinion on whether or not to move forward with the merger. I'm leaning toward no simply because of the fact that the site they want to merge is outperforming the other. I'm curious, though, to get some other opinions on this. Would a merger be worth the work in this case? Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!
-
Thanks for all of the helpful responses!
-
I would give them what they want, and inform them of the possible outcomes
More often than not (with proper redirects in place) the new page will rank on the same spot after a while.
It's a win win for them. They get what they want, they have 1 domain to worry about plus they have built a lot of links to the separate domains.
It's like the traditional ecommerce strategy: build separate product specific sites -> after building enough traffic -> 301 to category page of main domain. We all know it's harder to get natural links to category/product pages so that's what I would do.
gazzerman1's suggestion would be my next play if that doesn't get approved.
-
Another option is to host the same content on the main site and use the canonical tag on them. But the I would do as Devanur Rafi suggests, replicate the content on the new site and 301 redirect to the old pages. All the links gained will follow the 301 so the power will transfer over. I would leave the old site up permanently otherwise any links pointing to the old domain will be lost when the 301 redirect no longer exists. Another option is to go to webmaster or some other tool get a list of those links and contact the webmaster to let them know of the site move and to change the links to the new domain.
-
Hi friend, IMHO, you should go ahead with the merger as the idea is to have one stable and wide website. Moreover, all the SEO goodies of other websites will be inherited by the destination site within few weeks. Don't worry about the product site outperforming the main site. We did this twice in the past and came out with flying colors. Go ahead with a proper page-to-page 301 redirection for the merger and don't kill the product site for at least 6-7 months.
Please write back with more queries.
Best regards,
Devanur Rafi
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
-
Two domains / same Content
Hi MOZzers, I have recently started working for a client who owns two domains (as recommended by their Web Development company), each omain is a complete duplication of the other. The only difference is one is a totally keyword focused domain name, the other is their brand name which also contains keyword. In a search for blocks of content the keyword focused domain comes up, the other doesn't and when I conducted a search for one of their primary services again the keyword focused domain name came up on the first page, but the branded search also appeared on the second. The web development company have been managing this company's Adwords account and promoting their brand name and up until today I was unaware of the other. Can I have some thoughts - do I ask the web developers to re-direct one to the other, or leave as it?
Technical SEO | | musthavemarketing0 -
Questions on switching domain name of my site
Hey guys, I purchased a domain name on May 1st and have been running my site on it since then. At the time when I added the domain name to the shopping cart, I felt that it was the best domain name a human could possibly come up with. But now, after two months, I am not so sure about it. And that means I am thinking of getting a new domain name and redirecting the old domain to the new one. Give that the domain is only two months old, there is not much to lose. However, my domain name does have some valuable backlinks, and has built some credibility in the eyes of search engines. According to MOZ Open Site Explorer, its Domain Authority is 10 and Page Authority (homepage) is 20. It's not much, but I fear that if I switch the domain name, I will reset the clock and the new domain name will have to earn the rankings from scratch That said, after searching this forum, I come across articles like this one from google and this 2012 article from MOZ that gave me some confidence. The MOZ article is from 2102, and there have been several changes since then. Is there an updated version of that article, or another legit article on the internet that you can point me to? As you can tell, I want to be more than sure that we don't take any hit during the migration process. Also want to mention that the site is on WordPress -- in case that is relevant. Thank you for your help.
Technical SEO | | deathbyseo0 -
Domain change recommendations
We recently migrated one of our websites to a new domain. Obviously we were expecting a decrease in traffic initially, but it has actually gone down by 70% week-over-week since we made the switch. We set up a 301 redirect from the old domain to the new domain, changed all internal links to the new domain and changed all inbound links that we owned to the new domain. Our research suggested the best way to approach a domain change was by keeping it simple and not making too many changes at once. So my questions are: 1. Are these the kinds of results we should expect initially after a domain change? And if not, 2. What are the steps we should take from here? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | gouldtr0 -
Different domains for multilingual website
Hey guys, A site that I'm currently working on as different domains for each website language. So for example: word1word2.com for the english version word3word4.com for the french version word5word6.com for spanish version .... Is it better to move all of the different languages to the same domain and use subfolders for each language /fr/... Please note that the domains being used bring in organic traffic as well as they are EMDs. Thank You.
Technical SEO | | BruLee0 -
New Website and Domain Question
Hi all, I am launching a new website around the end of October and I have purchased a great domain to use for it. My question is should I put some kind of holding page up to try and start building up some domain authority in preperation for launch? Or maybe a blog at www.domain.com/blog and then keep all the blog content at the same location when the full site goes up? Or is it best to wait and just launch the site when the first version is complete? Thanks, Ben
Technical SEO | | BenInder0 -
Does redirect of domain alias help rankings?
Yes... It iz I again ;o) Here's one for you savy techies out there: So, I've got a primary domain which is live, optimized and running smooooth. And then I've got a couple of misspelled domains as well (17 to be exact). Will it have an effect if I 301 those misspelled domains? What's Best Practice for several domain aliases? Example.
Technical SEO | | nosuchagency
Primary domain: bryghusprojektet.dk
Alias domain 1: bryghusprojekt.dk (301 redirects to primary domain)
Alias domain 2: bryghus-projekt.dk (Hosting company infopage)
Alias domain 3: bryghus-projekter.dk (Not activated) Regards.1 -
How does robots.txt affect aliased domains?
Several of my sites are aliased (hosted in subdirectories off the root domain on a single hosting account, but visible at www.theSubDirectorySite.com) Not ideal, I know, but that's a different issue. I want to block bots from viewing those files that are accessible in subdirectories on the main hosting account, www.RootDomain.com/SubDirectorySite/, and force the bots to look at www.SubDirectorySite.com instead. I utilized the canonical meta tag to point bots away from the sub directory site, but I am wondering what will happen if I use robots.txt to block those files from within the root domain. Will the bots, specifically Google bot, still index the site at its own URL, www.AnotherSite.com even if I've blocked that directory with Disallow: /AnotherSite/ ? THANK YOU!!!
Technical SEO | | michaelj_me0 -
What is the best method to block a sub-domain, e.g. staging.domain.com/ from getting indexed?
Now that Google considers subdomains as part of the TLD I'm a little leery of testing robots.txt with something like: staging.domain.com
Technical SEO | | fthead9
User-agent: *
Disallow: / in fear it might get the www.domain.com blocked as well. Has anyone had any success using robots.txt to block sub-domains? I know I could add a meta robots tag to the staging.domain.com pages but that would require a lot more work.0