5 small sites into 1 big one

[BobbyN]

Hello WW

I presently fun 5 small sites on finance related topics, each site about 25 pages.

I now want to amalgamate them all into one larger site with the Theme concept.

All of the content from the 5 sites will be duplicated almost 100% on the new site (new url as well).

My question is this. What should I do with the old sites? Should I take the content down immediatly when the new site goes live and use a simple re-direct?

Should I run them paralel and link them all to the new site?

Should I run them for a month or so and then take them down? etc

Thanks

[BobbyN]

Any ideas on this question folks?

Thanks

[webdude]

If it was me, and seeing how duplicated content may be frowned upon, I would tend to do a redirect. It is clean and I have used it with success in the past.

[karmov]

Ya, I've already absorbded a smaller site into a bigger one and the way to do it is with 301 redirects. Makes everyone happy, old users with bookmarks, SEs, etc...

[BobbyN]

Thanks boys for the comments.

Very helpfull

[PatrickDeese]

FWIW - Google sucks at duplicate content detection.

Use CSS in one site and standard <table> and <font> tags in the other site and you are good to go.

[BobbyN]

That's interesting Patrick. But would you link the sites together.

For example if I have 4 sites, A,B,C,D, I create a new site E which has all the content of A,B,C,D PLUS a fair amount of new content.

Would you put a link up to the new site E from the other 4, or don't push it too much?

[PatrickDeese]

> good to go

I forgot to add - unless a competitor reports you. Pretty much depends how competitive your SERPs are.

> don't push it too much

Don't push it.

Let links build naturally. If you are listed in a directory like DMOZ or Y!, don't request that this site be added, unless it has a huge number of sites in it.

If you are being especially sneaky, be sure to yse different hosting, whois, etc.

[Need3lives]

Good question - I am in the same boat, and have been planning something similar.

Would love to hear more opinions on this.

[BobbyN]

Need

I just got a sticky from someone who said they 301 their old sites and it worked perfectly with G, the spider came and indexed all the new site.

I think this is the way to go, just keep it simple.

[experienced]

Hi,

301 redirection is good to search engine point of view also. But cud you pls tell me one think here.
I have a site www.abc.com, and now i am planning to shift the same site with 50% different content on the new domain. I can have a server redirection 301 for old site to the new one, but is there any problem if both the sites are hosted on the same server..? Or should i need to chane the server for new one..?

Thanks
Exp...

[webdude]

Is there a reason why you would want to break to 2 sites. I can see doing this if the content and context was different, but I am not sure breaking into multiple domains for like type sites would gain you anything from Gs point of view.

In fact, I had a client who had one site that was broke into over 10 domains that I ended up combining into one. All had similar content about one subject. The client thought he was being sneaky by registering keywordkeyword.com type domains and then registering the different domains to different search engines and directories. What a headache to straighten out the mess.

He could never figure out how come his site never got a PR above 1. I combined all the sites into 1 site that was much richer in content, add some external linking, yada yada yada. Result? A PR of 6 and a great improvement in the SERPs.

[experienced]

see the old site is got dammage into the new florida update and vanished from the google. NOw am planning to shift the site on the new domain with the different content upto 50%. Old site will be deleted and create a redirection for the new one.

What do you suggest..
Thanks
Exp..

[experienced]

Sorry I did not answer your question.

PR is like a standard provided by google to each and every page on the web. I think if your sites doesn't have good pr or have 1 or 2, i think you must not worry about it. As you have good content and external links from the various sites hosted on various server, definitely in the coming time pr is going to be increase. BOL :)
Thanks
EXP...

[webdude]

I was not suggesting that PR is a good indicator of ranking. What I was suggesting is that his site never increased above a PR1 and he was returning at about the 600's in the SERPS. After combining the sites and doing some redirects, PR went to 6 and now he is on the first page for most of his phrases.

I agree with you about PR. I have several sites on page 1 that have a PR of either 4 or 5 with other sites that have PRs of 6 or 7 listed below us.

[UK_Web_Guy]

BobbyN

What benefit do you think will be achieved my this?

I'm in a similar position to you so am just curious

[BobbyN]

4 advantages

1. Bigger sites seem to be doing a lot better than smaller ones.

2. I think my bigger site will be more of a theme site rather than a one topic site.

3. I use GoLive and have only been using about 25% of its potential. It has very powerful site maintanance capabilities and therefore I think it will be easier and simpler for me to look after one bigger site rather than say 5 smaller ones.

4. Cross selling will be easier I think because if the surfer wants to look at a different product he won't have to click out of the site into another one.

[egomaniac]

BobbyN,

301 redirects will certainly work. I have done that in the past for a couple of pages I had to kill due to duplicate content.

Here's another idea. Put the content on the new larger site as planned. But keep the old sites up with summarized content on each page with a link pointing to the full content articel on the big theme site. Assuming your small sites have articles or something like that, you could summarize the article, or just use the first paragraph or two and end the page with a link to the full article on the larger theme site.

This way, you would have a bunch of satellite sites pointing to the larger themed "sun" site in the center of your own web "solar-system". Doing this would require little extra work, would instantly double the number of pages you have out there, would increase the PR of the pages in the theme site, and would give your links with great anchor text coming from related sites into your theme domain. Oh, and you won't get a duplicate penalty because only 10-25% of each page is being duplicated.

Don't do massive cross-linking. Just link from each article summary on the mini-site to the full article page on the theme-site.

-egomaniac

[BobbyN]

Ego, that's a very good idea, thanks a lot.