Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
I am in the (fictionally) monkey wrench business. I started a site selling my monkey wrench expertise back in the early 90's. The site served its purpose well, and became established in Goog-Yahoo-Bing as a monkey wrench site.
In 2002 I went in to the (fictionally) rutabaga business. Instead of opening a new domain (which I should have) I built a new rutabaga section in my wrench site. A big section: about two thousand pages. No connection in any way to monkey wrenches, no cross linking at all. What a dumb way to go, right?
Over the years my rutabaga business has become successful as a web based enterprise, monetized thru a good on-line advertising market. There is no such income flow for the monkey wrench business: what I make in that field is thru my contacts and reputation.
I believe that the big 3 SE's are a little confused about my site; they see it as a monkey wrench site with a lot of rutabaga content.
Its time to settle this confusion: I need a dedicated rutabaga site. But I'm leery of jumping from modest success into a well of troubles.
I can remove my monkey wrench content from the established site, perhaps build a new domain/site just for the wrench content. But how do I change important factors like the title tag on my index page from monkey wrenches to rutabagas without going into SE oblivion, perhaps even the dreaded sandbox. Do you think the fact I have had rutabaga content for 8 years help my site hold its rutabaga rankings?
I don't think the answer is a new site/domain for rutabagas. I don't want to upset that apple cart at all.
If there is anyone out there who has gone thru a similiar experience, I would deeply appreciate your advice.
But how do I change important factors like the title tag on my index page from monkey wrenches to rutabagas without going into SE oblivion, perhaps even the dreaded sandbox.
Does your home page rank for the terms you are talking about changing it to now? If not, there is no real way I can think of to 'keep your rankings' for the home page because you don't have any for the terms you want to change it to, and of course you will lose your 'monkey wrench' rankings if you change the topic of it to rutabagas...
Personally, I think I would not move anything to another site, unless I had to...
I would probably opt to move most of the content about monkey wrenches from the home page to another page, say a 'monkey wrench' overview page, which is linked from the home page and then 'refocus' the home page to rutabagas.
This could be done over time, so you could initially split the home page, or add information about rutabagas to the home page a couple paragraphs at a time while removing the monkey wrench information at the same rate and then transition through the change in focus over time.
Honestly, though, depending on the exact topics I might even leave the page 'split' at 50 / 50...
The title:
Monkey Wrenches & Rutabagas - Twist, Tighten, Graze, Stew, Moo
Might get you some extra traffic. LOL.
Yeah, you probably won't use the title, but the point is there's all kinds of interesting (and possibly cool) things I think you could do with two different topics on a single site and the example you have might not work as well, but since clicks are part of the personalized results, you might do well with if your real topics were a bit different with something like:
Monkey Wrenches & Lace Widgets - A Handy Man's Dream Site, For the Ladies Too
Next year I want to be 100% ecommerce, selling the full line of widgets. But I don't want to give up the good traffic I have now.
I thought about this problem (the same type of problem you're having) and decided to keep the advertising pages that bring in traffic for someone looking for "widget stores," but change the main focus of the site to the full ecommerce.
It's not an easy balance.
