Merge main domain and subdomain websites... with WMT?

[mtarini]

Hello, I'm new here, and a beginner at all of this.

My problem.

For a long time, my small company had his own website for his activities, plus a separate one for a specific main sub-activity.

I'll explain myself with an example. Say we dealt in general pets, with a core sub-activity about cats.
A few years ago, I made "/cats/" a folder on our website, and made google consider it as a separate website from the root "/" website.

So, in the google webmaster tools, I control two websites (made up names):

• www.mypetcompany.tld
  
• www.mypetcompany.tld/cats <== (always fared well SEO-wise: first hit in many cat related searches!)
  

Naturally the first is for our general pets related business, the second is dedicated to the cat stuff.
It sounded like a good idea and kinda worked.

After a few years, cats progressively became our only business, so, some 1/2 year ago, we decided to dismiss the old "/" site, with a 302 redirect from it to the "/cats/" site.

Now, the main "/" site is linked from a lot of other places.
Not only from the pet-related sites originally linking it, which are still relevant links;
even cat-related site started linking to our root site (because of the redirect, this works for them).

Naturally, the /cat/ site is linked from a lot of places too.

The problem is:
I would like to merge the two sites, so that google sees only one, accumulating all the external links to it.

What is the safest, better way to do so?
Should I officially dismiss the /cats/ website?

Some additional info, in case it is relevant:

• the "/" website reports around twice the number of external links with respect to the "/cats/" one.
  This is because an external link to, for example: "www.mypetcompany.tld/cats/purr.html"
  is (apparently) seen as a link by both websites.
  the "/" website, sees it as a link to the page "cats/purr.html",
  and, the "/cats/" website, to the page "purr.html".
  Naturally, links to "www.mypetcompany.tld" are only reported by the "/" website.
  
  
• the cat website always fared a lot better that the root site, SEO wise.
  For cat related searches (which is all we care about), Google used to return the /cats/ address.
  Now, it is returning the root address instead (and I fear it is degrading a bit).
  In general, the /cat/ website fared so nicely so far that "deleting" it sounds like madness.
  
  
• by mistake, the / website had a sitemap.xml which featured its original general-pet pages, not the /cats/ pages.
  It was like that since the day it was redirected (oops); I corrected it only today.
  

In total, it's a mess. I'm very confused!
Can anybody help?

(apologies if I'm using any wrong terminology)

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 7:50 pm (utc) on Oct 8, 2015]
[edit reason] Changed .com to .tld, in case .com domain actually exists [/edit]

[Walt Hartwell]

www.mypetcompany.tld is a domain
www.mypetcompany.tld/cats/ is a folder on the www.mypetcompany.tld domain
Webmaster Tools has virtually nothing to do with how things are treated in the real world environment.

If your folder /cats/ has performed well in the past, remove the 302 redirects from root "/" to the "/cats/" folder. 302 is a temporary redirect which tells search engines that the information previously at root "/" can be found for some time at "/cats/". Give the search engines some time to digest the changes.
When things have stabilized, ask again about how to best change site structure.

[mtarini]

Thanks for the answer, and the precious pieces of advice!

I'm a still a bit confused, thought.

> Webmaster Tools has virtually nothing to do with how things
> are treated in the real world

I see... it makes sense; but, doesn't the Webmaster Tools somewhat reflects/influences how google sees the world? Specifically, when I log in the Search Console, I see the two things, the domain and the folder, listed as separated "Web Sites", each with its own stats, settings, sitemaps, etc. I imagined this means that the two are separated things, in Google eyes. In facts, before the change, Google used to return the folder site for the "cat" queries, whereas now it is returning the "root" site instead (and... a bit lower on average, I think).

This is my problem: I suspect that Google might see them as a duplicated websites, hurting my SEO, and therefore I suspect that I might be better off if I convinced Google, in the best possible way, that there is only one "web site" now (which could be either one of them). Or, maybe not.

> 302 is a temporary redirect

I see, thanks for the info.
Ok, they are 301 redirects now. Thanks.

> remove the 302 redirects from root "/" to the "/cats/" folder.

Now that they are 301, should I keep them?
Or remove them and use with a simple root page (about general pets, in the example) linking (not, redirecting) to the "/cats/" page?
Or what?

> When things have stabilized, ask again about how to best change site structure.

I see, I will, thanks...
meanwhile, am I doing things correctly?

Thanks for the patience...

[aakk9999]

A few years ago, I made "/cats/" a folder on our website, and made google consider it as a separate website from the root "/" website.

What was the reason to do this? In general, one would do this because of folder geo-targetting, and if not geo-targetting, then I have only heard it done in order to separately follow some aspects of statistics reported within WMT.

For cat related searches (which is all we care about), Google used to return the /cats/ address.
Now, it is returning the root address instead (and I fear it is degrading a bit).

This is as Walt said above - if you 302 Home page to internal page, Google will show home page in SERPs instead.

In general, the /cat/ website fared so nicely so far that "deleting" it sounds like madness.

In reality, you have cats page and not cats website and it is the page that ranks well. If you re-organise your content and move /cats/ content to the home page, then 301 redirect /cats/ page to the home page, there is a chance that the home page may rank as well as /cats/ page did before. But you would also need to move the whole structure that is under /cats/ folder to be under the root folder instead.

This is my problem: I suspect that Google might see them as a duplicated websites,

Do not worry, Google does not see them as a separate websites and does not treat them as duplicate content. Adding folder to WMT allows you to geo-target part of your site and to have some of statistics (links, keywords driving traffic etc) to this part of your website seen separately. But ultimately there is only one URL to access the content.

[mtarini]

This is gold. I thank you both for all the info. It is really clarifying. Thank you both a lot.

So, an option for me is to move everything from "cats/" folder to "/" root folder, make 301 redirects from "/cats/" to root, and "hope for the best". Then, in the long run, dismiss the "/cats/" folder altogether. Correct?

But, if I understand, I might as well leave the "/cats/" folder as is, just make the "/" hope page 301-redirect to "/cats/index.html" or something, and leave the "/cats/" in all our addresses. Correct?

If both options are equivalently sound, (because there is no web-page replication issue), then I would probably go for the latter, because I suspect that having "cats" in the URLs (even if only in the path) contributed to improve the rank for cat-related searches. That's reasonable, right?

[Walt Hartwell]

Search engines don't really care for sites where pages and redirects are constantly changing, it doesn't allow them to neatly organize the way they would like. I'll suggest again, remove the 302, then let things settle. 2 weeks to 30 days, then look at where traffic is coming in, and how best to serve content to users.

Any decisions you make now are based on bad data. Changing 302s to 301, dropping pages, changing structure now isn't likely to get the results you want.

[lucy24]

just make the "/" home page 301-redirect to "/cats/index.html"

Noooo....

There is no point in changing from 302 to 301 (or, for that matter, the other way around) until you've figured out exactly what you want to do in the long term. First figure out how you want the site to look. Then redirect as needed.