Combining Two Websites - how to preserve traffic?

[webstuck]

We currently have two websites: the main company website and a country specific site. We recently updated the main company website to include the services that the country specific website offers. Now we're faced with the dilemma of figuring out what to do with the country specific website.

While the country specific website doesn't get much traffic or have many external links, the ones that it does have are higher weighted links. Another thing to mention is that 75% of the traffic to the country specific site is to one specific page that contains a free tool. This free tool is also on the main company website though.

What's the best way to handle a situation like this with google so that we preserve the traffic that the country specific site does receive? Should we leave the country specific site up and running? Should we use 301 redirects and send the traffic from the country specific site to the appropriate page on the main company site? Any other ways of handling this?

Thanks!

[mattg3]

I kinda always go with the motto "never change a winning team". Don't change a thing if your afraid of loosing traffic.

[jatar_k]

my thought is not to change it, link out to it from the main corp site and back from the other.

keep the same model and build other country specific sites where necessary and make them all spokes in the wheel with the main site as the hub