Merging Successful Sites

[UKSEOconsultant]

It has always been my opinion that it is better to organically promote (SEO) one large site rather than to spread the target keyphrases over a network of smaller sites, mainly due to the extra work required for off-site optimisation.

Here's the scenario; (All sites relate to the same topic)

Site A - existing small site, ranks well for keyword x
Site B - existing small site, ranks well for keyword y
Site C - existing site, no rankings/no PR due to minimal SEO

We plan to use site C as our main site and a new version is going to be live very soon - this will be much larger and offer vast amounts of fresh content, RSS feeds, updated regularly with articles etc.

My question is; Is it best to carry on promoting (SEO'ing) each site separately OR to employ a 301 redirect from sites A & B to the new site C. (with the content that was on sites A & B now being published on site C)

The idea is that by using the 301 method the PR from sites A & B will be transferred to site C. We will also be able to concentrate our off-site SEO efforts on one main site. But would we risk losing the rankings we already have for sites A & B?

Just not sure which way to go!

Thanks in anticipation!

[Quadrille]

Cool URIs Don't change [w3.org]

If you were starting now, I'd have no hesitation in saying 'do it all on one site'.

But as all three exist, you have both risks and benefits in moving.

IF you can move the two site to folders on the third WITHOUT significant change (ie change ONLY the navigation), then a whole site 301 from the old to the new is low risk and should do the job. More so if you can set up newsite.com/folder/ in advance and give an index page time to be assimilated by the SEs.

This will only be safe / effective if you can resist the temptation to upgrade / tinker / improve the moved content for several months (though adding to it is OK).

Without those certainties, the risks are overwhelmingly greater than any benefit

[UKSEOconsultant]

Many thanks Quadrille, much appreciated.

Your comment: "More so if you can set up newsite.com/folder/ in advance and give an index page time to be assimilated by the SEs".

I'm assuming by this that you mean publish the content from site A & B on the new site C but keep it on A & B until the new content on site C has been indexed. Wouldn't this be duplicate content though?

I've probably got the wrong end of the stick though!

Thanks again, Lee

[Quadrille]

Not duplicate content - at least, not until just before the change - but a holding page, 'coming soon' or whatever, to allow the page to be spidered by SEs, can help.

In my view, the risk of duplicate content problems when transferring from a smaller site to a bigger, better established one, is small if you transfer the content a few days before you remove it from the old site and set up your 301; a risk outweighed by the benefit of a fair chance of the stuff being indexed at the new site ASAP.

Either way, so long as the 301 works, people will go from olddomain/page htm directly to newdomain/olddomainfolder/page.htm - and 99% will not worry that the URL has changed.

I did this recently, and while the old pages still appear in Google, the new pages appear above them; neither are supplemental yet (almost one month), but I suspect the old site wasn't spidered that often as it was a small site with infrequent changes.

The key to all this is a correct, working 301 - and DO NOT take this as "an opportunity to update the site", which could be fatal - it's an opportunity to STOP updating the site while the SEs assimilate the new stuff.

As Captain Picard would tell you, even the Borg need a little time to get the assimilating done!

[UKSEOconsultant]

Another fine post Quadrille! Much appreciated.