Domain Change - Splitting site into two sites (301's to two places)

[northcave]

Site A: discountwidgets.co.uk
Site B: NothingButWidgets.com
Site C: NothingButSprockets.com

We are planning to redirect Site A due to rebranding. I understand the correct process to do this in both 301 redirects and the webmaster tools domain change advice.

However, we want to redirect the contents of Site A two websites rather than just one under a normal domain change proceedure, namely Site B & C. Half to one and half to another. We want to do this as we have separate website for separate product types and they are very different customers.

The question is:

1. If we direct the website A to sites B & C, will the SEO ranks follow evenly to both sites or will be loose out as we are not really changing the domain of one site but splitting it up.

Or

2. Are we better to redirect all pages of Site A to Site B and then afterwards, selectively redirect pages from Site B to Site C (namely just the sprockets)

Note: you will see that Site B is a copy of Site A, minus the sprockets.

Which way would you do this? I am worried about option 1 and loosing Google ranks of Site A in the transfer. But I am also worried about Option 2 and doing two allotments of 301 redirects in a close amount of time which will looks suspicious to Google.

Many thanks

[edited by: goodroi at 3:10 pm (utc) on Feb 11, 2015]
[edit reason] Widgetized [/edit]

[aakk9999]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld, northcave.

If I understood well, sites B and C do not exist yet? They will be created by splitting site A into Site B and Site C?

Questions

Here are some questions that should be considered:

• How much are pages on site A that will redirect to site B and pages on site A that will redirect to site C currently interlinked within the site A?
  
  
• The current site A, how many of its pages are supporting pages (e.g. information pages supporting products) and does the same informational page supports both, product that will end up on Site B and the other product that will end up on site C?
  
  If you have supporting pages where the same set of pages support both types of products then upon site split and move, one or both sites will "lose" as either only one will get these supporting pages or supporting pages will be split between two sites, making each of them thiner.
  
  
• Products that you wish to go to site B and site C, how different are they? Are these in essence the same products, just a different luxury scale (cheap versus luxury)? Or are these completely different products (different such as for example, Mars Inc. producing both, petfood and chocolates)?
  

The strategy

It is difficult to suggest what you should should do without knowing answers to questions I asked above. But under the assumptions these are different products, what I would consider doing is to create first either the less important site or the site with less pages/less supporting pages (let's call it site C here) and redirect pages from site A there.

This means that you would still have (now slimmer) site A and site C where part of site A pages have been redirected. Then give it some time to Google to digest the change and monitor the ranking. You may want to strengthen site C by adding a good new content and try to attract some independent links to site C. You may also want to email sites that were linked to pages that have now been moved to site C and ask webmasters to update their links to link directly to site C.

In this way you can monitor both - the newly created site C as well as how site A behaves now that it lost x% ofr its content.

When this stabilises, then you may want to create site B and move the remainig part of site A to site B. Again, I would have ready some good new pages and I would write to webmasters that link to pages that remained on site A to now link directly to equivalent page on site B.

Google WMT

I would not execute "domain move" in WMT as I am not sure whether Google would get confused since you are not moving domain, you are splitting it into two different ones. But I would add a new domain(s) to the same Google Webmaster Tools account.

And lastly...

I would be very interested in what you have decided to do and how it went. If you can answer some of questions above, please do so as the suggestion on what to do may change based on your answers.

[lucy24]

I would not execute "domain move" in WMT as I am not sure whether Google would get confused since you are not moving domain, you are splitting it into two different ones.

We can only hope that eventually google will steal an idea from That Other Search Engine. Their wmt, unlike google's, does allow for directory-specific changes. The target could be anything from a renamed directory to an entirely different site.

I did this in a small way a bit over a year ago when I split my original site in two: six directories moved over to a new hostname, while two stayed behind. So Bing was told "I'm moving!" while Google had to figure it out for themselves.

The key difference between a human redirect and a search-engine redirect is that search engines will request supporting files (images, stylesheets) "cold" so they need to be explicitly redirected. Human browsers will have a relative or site-absolute link so you don't need to think about it.

[northcave]

Hi and thanks for the replies.

To clarify. Site B and Site C do exist already.

Site C is already well founded and sells a product tote that is sold on Site A. <for example pens>

Site B is a copy of Site A so all the URLs are the same and the code.

What I wish to do is rebrand Site A into Site B and but at the same time split off some of the products from Site A into Site C since I already had a successful website that specialised in that product type.

At the end I was Site B selling <for example pencils> and a Site C selling <for example pens>. They may sound similar but in fact very different markets and products.

Site A will disappear.

I want to try and do that as efficiently as possible and retain as much SEO goodwill.

[edited by: aakk9999 at 11:59 am (utc) on Feb 15, 2015]
[edit reason] Removed real products and replaced with example products [/edit]

[aakk9999]

Thanks on clarifying and as per Forum Charter [webmasterworld.com], please do not use your real products, use wigets, or if additional clarification required, use generalised example products different to yours.

Site B is a copy of Site A so all the URLs are the same and the code.

Which site ranks, A or B? Is there canonical link element (rel=canonical) on URLs of one site pointing to another?

Site C is already well founded and sells a product tote that is sold on Site A. <for example pens>

Similar question - if you search for your <pencils>, which site ranks, A or C? Is there canonical link element (rel=canonical) between pages of these two sites?

Since all three sites already exist, you could choose a handful of pages which currently rank on site A and redirect them to site B and site C and see what happens with ranking of these pages. This can be your initial test.

But all together I would do the other way around to what you were asking under points 1 and 2 of your opening mail.

I would firstly redirect all <pencils> pages of site A and site B to site C on a relevant page-to-page basis. If there is a page that exists on sites A/B and is not on site C, it should be created on site C and pages from sites A/B redirected there. If site C has rel=canonical to A or B, these need to be removed.

This would result in having site A (and its copy site B) focusing on <pencils> only and all <pens> content on site C. Wherever possible, change internal links for <pens> that point to site A/B onto equivalent page on site C.

I would then let Google digest this - depending on the site size you may look here between 1-6 months for Google to fully process this.

Once this is done, then you can redirect the remainder of site A to site B, and execute Domain Move in WMT since by that time all <pens> content will already be on site C. If you are using rel=canonical, be careful that they still do not point to site A after redirects and site move.

Also make sure that once you start your site split, none of sites are blocked by robots.txt or meta robots noindex.

[northcave]

Which site ranks, A or B? Is there canonical link element (rel=canonical) on URLs of one site pointing to another?

Site A ranks well for Widgets and Sprockets. B is a new copy of B so currently has no ranks. It has Robots activated. I hope that when I move A to B that most of ranks will copy over for Widgets.

Site C is also old and ranks very well for Sprockets. I hope that when I 301 redirect the Sprockets pages of Site A to Site C then it will just boost Site C's Spockets listings or make them more embedded / resilient.

After all is done and Site A is shut down (301 redirected entirely), Sprockets will be removed from Site B and the final result will be Site B selling Widgets and Site C selling Sprockets.

So the original question remains. Do I split Site A in two and 301 redirect each have to Site B and C. Or do I 301 redirect A to B, wait a month and then 301 Spockets from B to C?

What do you think?

[lucy24]

Or do I 301 redirect A to B, wait a month and then 301 Spockets from B to C?

... leaving your human users clutching a sheaf of outdated bookmarks? Seems like redirecting twice in a month could only annoy the search engine: "Make up your mind, willya!"

If you're shutting down the entire site, the organization of your redirects is straightforward. Start with the smaller group:
/(sprocketsA|sprocketsB|sprocketsC) >> 301 >> newsite/newpath

and then any remaining requests will automatically be for widgets:
/ >> 301 >> othernewsite/othernewpath

Don't forget to code for any boilerplate-type pages like Contact or About Us that will exist on every site. Decide whether you want to return a 410 for this area of Original Site, or instead redirect globally to whichever site will end up being biggest.