Question about breaking out content from one site onto many
-
We have a website and domain -- which is well-established (since 1998) -- that we are considering breaking apart for business reasons. This is a content site that hosts articles from a few of our brands in portal fashion. These brands are represented in print with their own magazines so it's important to keep their presence separate.
All of the content on the site is related to a general industry, with each brand covering a unique segment in the industry. For example, think of a toy industry site that hosts content from it's brands covering stuffed animals, electronics and board games.
The current thinking is to break out the content from a couple brands to their own sites and domains. The business case for this branding purposes. I'm of the opinion that this is a bad idea as we would likely see a noticeable decline in search traffic across the board, which we rely on for impressions for our advertisers.
If we take the appropriate steps to carefully redirect pages to the new domains what kind of hit should we expect to take from this transition? Would it make much difference if we were transition from 1 to 2 sites vs 1 to 4? Should this move be avoided all together? Any advise would be appreciated.
-
Our site hosts b2b content and while I agree with your scenario in general, we do have some niche content that some users would have no interest in.
A better example instead of a toy industry site might be a construction industry site. Let's say our content is generally related to the construction industry and our readers work in or own construction businesses. We might have brands and individual publications that cover everything from concrete innovations to lumber pricing to interior design. While all of the content is generally is related to construction, most interior design professionals may have zero interest in lumber pricing.
That's essentially where we're at. For branding purposes the interior design folks think it would be better to have their own uniquely branded website, but they'll obviously feel the pain of the break from the main construction site.
-
In your example you say....
.... think of a toy industry site that hosts content from it's brands covering stuffed animals, electronics and board games.
If that is your website, do you think that a shopper will be pleased that she can do gift shopping there and add a stuffed animal and a board game to the shopping cart. If you split these sites all of that cross shopping will be gone. How many of your current shopping carts mix items from the different parts of your website. All of that is gone. And, if people are like me, they don't like go buy one item here, another item there, another item at still another site and then wait for all of these packages to arrive and be interrupted or stay home because you have a package scheduled to arrive.
I have retail sites. How many of my customers add products to their shopping cart from multiple product categories? I'll tell you how many.... enough that if that was taken away that my business might not make a profit. You don't make much money selling one item at a time. You make the real money when people fill the cart.
If you publish magazines, don't you think that a visitor will see that you publish Magazine A and Magazine B and Magazine C.... they will think... Wow! This company publishes all of these magazines, they must know what they are doing. And if someone likes Magazine A a lot, don't you think they might be on your site and see that you also publish Magazine C and decide to take a look at it. Lots of people subscribe to many magazines.
The people who want to break up this site are not thinkin'.
-
I agree with you and I'm hoping that I can talk them out of it. Hearing words like "enormous traffic loss" is enough for me to fight this.
-
I am willing to bet good money that breaking up this site will result in an enormous traffic loss.
Why? You are going to take a large authoritative domain that is probably a nice brand and break it up into a bunch of hotdog stands.
Google likes big brands. Google likes authority. Visitors like to be impressed. I would not do this.
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
-
How to avoid Duplicate Content Creation While Assigning One Post in 2 Categories
Hello Everyone, I need advice with blog post in wordpress. I have one blog which i wish to assign to 2 different categories as the blog is related to both of the categories, for eg infographics & How to. I have noticed that if i have one post related 2 categories it flags as Duplicate content how to over come this issue. Your advice is highly appreciated. Warmest
Technical SEO | | wolfeyes0 -
I noticed all my SEOed sites are getting attacked constantly by viruses. I do wordpress sites. Does anyone have a good recommendation to protect my clients sites? thanks
We have tried all different kinds of security plugins but none seem to work long term.
Technical SEO | | Carla_Dawson0 -
Site Map
For a long time our site map used to be http://www.efurniturehouse.com/sitemap.xml recently our hosting company changed the site map to: http://www.efurniturehouse.com/xml-sitemap.ashx I went ahead and submitted the new site maps to both Google Webmaster and Bing. I submitted the Google one on Monday and it states PENDING. ( A day later this pending) I just submitted the map to Bing. I now have 2 site maps on each. 1)Is having 2 a problem Will they ignore the old site map or can we delete and if so when can we delete I appreciate your input Regards Tony www.eFurnitureHouse.com
Technical SEO | | OCFurniture0 -
Trying to get google to know my site is a magazine site is this wrong
Hi, i have put a line to describe what my site is at the top of my site and i want to know if this is wrong or not. We have dropped frok being number one in google for lifestyle magazine to now number seven. Before we had to redo our site we were number one and then we dropepd to around number four when we finished the site and now we are number seven and i need to try and get back up there. To help google know we are a lifestyle magazine i have put a line at the top of the site and i want to know if this looks out of place and if i should take it down. i need advice on how to get google to know we are a lifestyle magazine and get back in the top five of google my site is www.in2town.co.uk any help would be great
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
I am trying to correct error report of duplicate page content. However I am unable to find in over 100 blogs the page which contains similar content to the page SEOmoz reported as having similar content is my only option to just dlete the blog page?
I am trying to correct duplicate content. However SEOmoz only reports and shows the page of duplicate content. I have 5 years worth of blogs and cannot find the duplicate page. Is my only option to just delete the page to improve my rankings. Brooke
Technical SEO | | wianno1680 -
Redirect questions
Hi! A client of mine have created a new site with a new URL structure which they launched the other day. They have done a 301 redirect on all pages on the old site to the start page on the new site. E.g:
Technical SEO | | lojdqvist
www.olddomain.com/subfolder1/index.html -> www.newdomain.com
www.olddomain.com/subfolder2/index.html -> www.newdomain.com I'm thinking of fixing this now so the redirect instead looks someting like this:
www.olddomain.com/subfolder1/index.html -> www.newdomain.com/newsubfolder1/index.html
www.olddomain.com/subfolder1/index.html -> www.newdomain.com/newsubfolder1/index.html Two questions: 1. Is it worth doing the latter kind of redirect in all cases (after all, it involves quite a lot more work compared to the first solution)? or do you recommend the first solution for all redirect projects?
2. Now that they have already done the first solution, is it at all worth amending this to the latter or is everything spoiled now that they have already gone ahead with the first solution? Many thanks in advance!0 -
Site revision
our site has complete redesign including site architecture, page url and page content (except domain). It looks like a new site. The old site has been indexed about thirty thousand results by google. now what should i do first?
Technical SEO | | jallenyang0 -
Site Relaunch
Hello, I recently launched my new site (Nov. 25, 2011) but still have the old site live because I still need old customer data from the old admin for customer service issues and I cannot delete the old front-end without deleting the old back-end!. I am seeing a lot of referrals coming from the old site IP address with many backlinks to the new site but dont know if this is actually hurting the new site due to duplicate content, ect .. Any input would be greatly aaaaaapreciated 😉 Thanks in advance, Byron-
Technical SEO | | k9byron0