Move site, splitting pages between two new domains?

[NotTheMSM]

I have a site with thousands of pages and most of the traffic comes from Google. I want to move pages about one set of topics to a new domain name, and most of the pages are about that topic.

However, hundreds of the current pages are about a different set of topics and I'd also like to move those to an existing, lower-ranked domain that's been around for about a year.

All of the pages have the same URL structure: /articles/article001.html, etc. and it isn't possible to tell from the URL which topic the article covers. I.e., the different topics aren't in different subdirectories.

Moving to a new domain name is the top priority, so should I just do that first with all the pages, and then wait until it looks like everything is OK before moving the other pages? In any case I'd do the move(s) as described here:

[webmasterworld.com...]

Does anyone have experience with two moves at the same time?

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 8:00 pm (utc) on April 20, 2008]
[edit reason] made link active [/edit]

[tedster]

I don't have experience with this exact situation, only splitting off a set of pages to create a subdomain. But if a client wanted to do this, I would suggest starting with the lesser of the two sets of topics - gain some learning and stability there before tackling the major set.

You run the risk here of hurting traffic and ranking for all your content for an extended period. However, I also appreciate that business factors may dictate other priorities.

No matter which way you go, it sounds like a very tricky situation to me, both technically and with Google. I would first do an in-depth study to locate those urls that have good backlinks or rank well. Only then would I draw up plans. Since you're talking about thousands of pages, it might make sense to redirect only the most important and let googlebot sort out the rest from the new domain's navigation.

Here's the issue - every 301 requires extra indexing cycles at Google to check out trust issues. The more you can minimize that processing time by Google, the less time your new domains spend in a "crippled" condition.