Is it beneficial to break a big b2b into smaller sites?

[free_flower]

Hi everyone, I'm a junior SEO guy and I've been assigned a task by my boss, but it's a bit out of my depth.

1. Our website has a history of more than ten years, but recently the bosses want to split it into many sub-sites based on large categories, so as to specialize business (in order to optimize user experience), but our competitors have not done so, so I don't know if it's possible.【My website is a wholesale website, mainly wholesaling all kinds of daily necessities, such as folders, notepads, environmental protection bags, mugs, bags, etc. My boss wants to create different subsites for these categories to operate separately. The subcategories of a level may also have to be split into different sites】

2. Will splitting the website affect the ranking? If it will affect the ranking, is there any way to let the new website enjoy the traffic of the old website?

3. What is the approximate cost of splitting the website?

4. I only know this information so far, is there anything else I need to consider?

Do you have any good suggestions for this, thank you very much!

[not2easy]

Question 1: Specializing in various categories can be done without sacrificing the history. Have they considered working on navigation to achieve the same purpose?

Question 2: Yes, each new site will be seen as a new start-up and possibly competing with their own sites. Where businesses can now order from across your supply inventory, they will need to place multiple orders with different sites to fulfill their needs. This may contribute to delay and confusion. Without keeping the old site, it will be difficult to direct the existing traffic to the 'new' site so costs will increase.

Question 3: Anybody's guess.

Question 4: I'd suggest you keep your resume/CV up to date.

[free_flower]

Thanks for the answer.

1. But my website is a wholesale mall website and my competitors have never done so. I don't know if splitting is necessary
2. you said that the navigation is to optimize the existing categories of the site?
3. the company may not be willing to spend too much money, because at present our website has a lot of problems：
1.website categories and other pages without titles and descriptions, most of the descriptions are automatically generated templates
2.Images without alt
3.The website needs to be redesigned, because the home page is not conducive to user experience
4.No mobile terminal
5.No site map
6.Website structure is not very clear
7.did not do external links no promotion only consumption of keyword advertising
This is only the problem I found, there are many not found

My intention is to reject my boss's suggestion and deal with the site content first → UX optimization → external link building

[not2easy]

I would suggest curing the internal linking, content, descriptions and such before wasting time looking for external link building. Links are nice but not nearly as important as a functional site with clear content, clear navigation, easy for visitors to use. The image alt tags are important, both for search and for visually impaired users.

If it is not easy to use, and has technical problems, splitting into multiple sites won't fix that. It can only give more problems.

[free_flower]

Thank you for your answer

Since I'm the only one on the team at the moment, I can only do one thing first. I don't know whether to optimize user experience (site structure) or site content first. Because I don't know which is more important

[engine]

Content is what the search engines want, so that should always be a regular activity. If you have weak content, even if indexed, it'll be worth less than great content.
Make sure the internal linking for the content works otherwise the search engines can't find all that great content.
Really, you need to work on both quite systematically.

[thinkfast]

Since I'm the only one on the team at the moment, I can only do one thing first. I don't know whether to optimize user experience (site structure) or site content first. Because I don't know which is more important

Then you should learn about UX first because user experience mean how your website is reliable for a user .... Its first thing you need to consider and then place high quality contents accordingly. If your current website have multiple issues then i will suggest you to upgrade current website without splitting them in multiple site .... and because its ecommerce site so ask your boss for some budget, If not in wordpress.

[not2easy]

If the products are handled in a database, it might pay to see whether that can be worked on without fiddling with individual pages until the problematic fields can be brought up to date. It depends on how things are managed, but often the image alt tags can be generated from the product name and description if you can use text tools with regex.

If the descriptions are just too basic (duplicated) that would be the first requirement. If they can be broken down by existing categories the project can work on the most important categories first and leave lesser categories until the major income areas can be improved.

Yours is a chicken/egg situation because the site cannot be improved much without the contents being improved and that means the navigation work must be on hold or else too frequently updated. I would expect that you might need to become a group leader to give direction to others because it would take one person an extremely long time to turn the site you describe into what it needs to become. A group of competent workers can do a lot in a month with good direction. One person without direction should try to get some resources to make progress. If the people at the top don't recognize that, it would be difficult to be optimistic.

[nickZ]

Defintely I would spilt content and categories into new sites, it is better not to have a mega store.
Easier to move, to restore and so on.

2. Will splitting the website affect the ranking? If it will affect the ranking, is there any way to let the new website enjoy the traffic of the old website?

[RedBar]

@free_flower

I'm a junior SEO guy and I've been assigned a task by my boss, but it's a bit out of my depth.

Do you have a senior SEO, if so, what are they doing if not the site?
Is your boss the SEO or the company owner?
Who authorised the original site, by the sound of it no one had a clue as to what was going on.

I am not criticising you however simply reading through all the site's issues it would seem that a total re-construction is needed by someone who actually knows what they are doing especially so with website architecture. If, IF, your senior / boss says that is unaffordable then they are not being serious about the website, all they want is a quick and cheap fix which, I am guessing, is why you have been tasked with finding a remedy ... They do not know how to therefore let's hope the junior knows how to do it for cheap!

As not2easy said:

Question 4: I'd suggest you keep your resume/CV up to date.

FYI, this is my 30th year of running B2B sites, a massive amount of planning is needed to enable relatively easy up and down grades. in 2012 for html5 I took 2 years designing and testing before launching in 2014, that site replaced one from 1998.

4.No mobile terminal

I have a lot of desktop users and they now equate to about 50% of views, I have some business sites that have almost 80% mobile viewers, this needs to be addressed urgently, failure for management to attend to this means they are not at all serious about their business!

[free_flower]

Then you should learn about UX first because user experience mean how your website is reliable for a user .... Its first thing you need to consider and then place high quality contents accordingly. If your current website have multiple issues then i will suggest you to upgrade current website without splitting them in multiple site .... and because its ecommerce site so ask your boss for some budget, If not in wordpress.

1. The site does have a lot of problems at the moment, but website works, except that the ranking has been in the back
2. Currently the site in a very old system, the boss said to move to Wordpress, but I do not know exactly when to move
3. budget this estimate is a little difficult to apply, because we did not buy any tools, and the most money is also invested in ads; secondly, I just joined this company less than 1 month time

Really, you need to work on both quite systematically.

Okay, I will carefully review the content of our website and internal links (it is difficult to do is that I do not have any tools to check, because those costly tools our company simply do not have, so I can only rely on the naked eye to see the problem)

Yours is a chicken/egg situation because the site cannot be improved much without the contents being improved and that means the navigation work must be on hold or else too frequently updated. I would expect that you might need to become a group leader to give direction to others because it would take one person an extremely long time to turn the site you describe into what it needs to become. A group of competent workers can do a lot in a month with good direction. One person without direction should try to get some resources to make progress. If the people at the top don't recognize that, it would be difficult to be optimistic.

Will it also have an effect if the update is too frequent? I'm the only one on my team and I'm not experienced enough. I've asked my bosses and they mean they won't expand my team anymore.I really don't have a clear direction and I'm afraid of making mistakes

Defintely I would spilt content and categories into new sites, it is better not to have a mega store.

Do you mean moving some content to the new site?

Do you have a senior SEO, if so, what are they doing if not the site?
Is your boss the SEO or the company owner?
Who authorised the original site, by the sound of it no one had a clue as to what was going on.

I am the only SEO in our company, and there is no senior SEO (and I just joined this company less than 1 month), and the boss probably does not want to invest too much more in this area. My boss does not understand the SEO piece

I am guessing, is why you have been tasked with finding a remedy ... They do not know how to therefore let's hope the junior knows how to do it for cheap!

Yes, because of the COVID-19, the company also received the impact. So don't want to invest too much money

I'd suggest you keep your resume/CV up to date.

I don't understand what this means, is it updating my resume on this forum? Or is it updating my own resume for work?

FYI, this is my 30th year of running B2B sites, a massive amount of planning is needed to enable relatively easy up and down grades. in 2012 for html5 I took 2 years designing and testing before launching in 2014, that site replaced one from 1998.

You redesigned the old site, then slowly built it, and finally moved the data completely to the new site, right?

I have a lot of desktop users and they now equate to about 50% of views, I have some business sites that have almost 80% mobile viewers, this needs to be addressed urgently, failure for management to attend to this means they are not at all serious about their business!

Because they do not know SEO, and there are still some old customers who are maintaining orders, so they are not so serious

[tangor]

SEO is not your most pressing problem, site use for customers on different devices appears most pressing. Make sure the site is fully responsive to all viewports (solves the "mobile" side), address the internal links as soon as possible (one category at a time), and always make sure the content is served in a timely fashion on the users end.

I wouldn't break it up. You would be starting over with each new site and it is becoming more difficult to quickly rank new sites over existing.

Is this a static or cms site? Wordpress is a durable cms, but does have limitations regarding size/quantity. Might investigate that before making that change.

Make a list ON PAPER for management regarding the structural flaws that need to be addressed, the time frame to accomplish each of the missions, and, if possible, urge the hire of a second pair of hands working at YOUR direction to speed the process--someone with html, css, php, database and regex experience.

Sounds like you have a very large job to do, and a management team which does not know the full scope of the work needed. You CAN do the job, but it will take TIME to get it done.

[free_flower]

1. After much discussion, my boss and I have decided to take out only the hot products for "Specialized operations" (want to try the effect, but hesitate whether to use a separate domain name or a second domain name)

2. Referring to yourselves advice, the website was redesigned and built, but there are some difficulties in the English web page (because we are currently doing the Chinese website), I do not know whether to use the second-level domain name or independent domain name or directly translate the existing language

3. About the "Specialized operations" website, the original website will also retain this category, but I do not know whether to do a jump in the original website (when browsing the original website directly jump to the new website). Because this can increase some traffic and ranking

[not2easy]

I do not know whether to use the second-level domain name or independent domain name or directly translate the existing language

Google offers guidance when serving the same content in local variations, such as language translations. To ensure you are not competing against your own sites, it is best to let them know about different language versions and they explain that here: [developers.google.com...]

For question 3: You don't want to use different versions of the same content as "backlinks" and they explain a variety of ways to inform their bots.