Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Keep multiple domains or combine them?
-
I need some help figuring out if I should combine multiple domains or if I should let them be separate?
I have domain1.com, domain2.com, and domain3.com. Well, domain1.com owns domain2.com and domain3.com. And currently domain1.com points to domain2.com and domain3.com from the homepage. They are going through some changes at their business, and now the option is on the table to combine the domains or still let them be separate as long as they link to each other.
What is the best way to handle this and are there more things I should go through before making a decision? None of them have a ton of links to them, and they aren't super robust, but would just to have some advice.
Thanks a lot
-
Ah, in that case the main factor is: how are all ranking currently? If they each receive traffic for their respective local keywords, it would make sense to just keep them as is (don't fix what ain't broken).
However, if you feel they aren't getting the rankings they deserve, you should combine all the sites into 1 and consolidate the authority. As long as you set up 301 redirects correctly, you should be able to transfer your rankings and even improve them (if you set up your internal linking structure correctly). Just know you will most likely lose rankings for around 2 weeks.
Something to keep in mind: it's much easier to maintain and improve one website over three. If you plan on generating new content (as you should), having 1 blog with kickass content is far better than 3 mediocre ones.
Best,
Oleg -
I don't want to give the links just because this is for a proposal, but yes, they have the same keywords.
It's almost like the three domains are market based. Dallasredcars.com, ftworthredcars.com, and austinredcars.com, so regional for the same products.
-
Are they all related? SEO aside, would it make sense to combine them all?
If they are all similar and target similar keywords, it may make sense to combine them all and consolidate the authority. Tough to judge without knowing more info.
If you like, you can PM me the links and I can take a look and give a better suggestion.
Cheers,
Oleg
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Legacy domains
Hi all, A couple of years ago we amalgamated five separate domains into one, and set up 301 redirects from all the pages on the old domains to their equivalent pages on the new site. We were a bit tardy in using the "change of address" tool in Search Console, but that was done nearly 8 months ago now as well. Two years after implementing all the redirects, the old domains still have significant authority (DAs of between 20-35) and some strong inbound links. I expected to see the DA of the legacy domains taper off during this period and (hopefully!) the DA of the new domain increase. The latter has happened, although not as much as I'd hoped, but the DA of the legacy domains is more or less as good as it ever was? Google is still indexing a handful of links from the legacy sites, strangely even when it is picking up the redirects correctly. So, for example, if you do a site:legacydomain1.com query, it will give a list of results which includes pages where it shows the title and snippet of the page on newdomain.com, but the link is to the page on legacydomain1.com. What has prompted me to finally try and resolve this is that the server which hosted the original 5 domains is now due to be decommissioned which obviously means the 301 redirects for the original pages will no longer be served. I can set up web forwarding for each of the legacy domains at the hosting level, but to maintain the page-by-page redirects I'd have to actually host the websites somewhere. I'd like to know the best way forward both in terms of the redirect issue, and also in terms of the indexing of the legacy domains? Many thanks, Dan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | clarkovitch0 -
Consolidating Multiple Domains into A Single Domain
I have a client who's website is an amalgamation of multiple domains. jacksonhole.net is the main domain but the site passes traffic back and forth from the following domains/sites. My questions is, would it it be better for SEO to consolidate all of these domains under the single high authority domain and 301 redirect the rest or is that a really bad idea? Thanks for your help. jacksonhole.net (Domain Authority 31) jackson-hole-rental-condos.com (Domain Authority 22) jackson-hole-rental-homes.com (Domain Authority 21) j acksonholehotelguide.com (Domain Authority 19)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dbaxa-2613381 -
Two blogs on a single domain?
Hi guys, Does anyone have any experience of having (trying to rank) two separate blogs existing on one domain, for instance: www.companysite.com/service1/blogwww.companysite.com/service2/blogThese 2 pages (service 1 and service 2) offer completely different services (rank for different keywords).(for example, a company that provides 2 separate services: SEO service and IT service)Do you think it is a good/bad/confusing search engine practice trying to have separate blogs for each service or do you think there should be only one blog that contains content for both services?Bearing in mind that there is an already existing subdomain for a non-profit part of business that ranks for different keywords: non-profit.companysite.comand it will potentially have another blog so the URL would look like: non-profit.companysite.com/blogAny ideas would be appreciated!Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kellys.marketing0 -
Domain Forwarding - SEO Impacts?
I have a site that has been active for years - thinkbiglearnsmart.com. Awhile ago I had purchased about 50 domain names that were relevant to my company. I still have those urls and would like to use them to point to different pages on my site - just because they have good key words in the URLs. For example - one is dreamweavertrainingclassesonlinelive.com. Currently they are all redirecting to my homepage. A. is that hurting me? B. I would like to redirect to the more relevant page. ie the page dedicated to Dreamweaver training (http://thinkbiglearnsmart.com/dreamweaver-creative-cloud-training-course/ ) Will this hurt my Dreamweaver keyword for example because there is already a 301 redirect on that page from a very old Dreamweaver link which was something like thinkbiglearnsmart.com/dreamweaver C. On my hosting account where I can select where the URL forwards to - it has an option for "Location forwarding" and "Frame forwarding" - currently they are set to Frame forwarding - which one is best? Any help is much appreciated!!! Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | webbmason0 -
XML Sitemap on another domain
Hi, We've rebuilt our website and created a better sitemap index structure. There's a good chance that we not be able to append the XML files to existing site for technical reasons (don't get me started). I'm reaching out because I'm wondering if can we place the XML files on another website or subdomain? I know this is not best practice and probably very grey but I'm looking for alternatives. If there answer is DON'T DO IT let me know too. Thx
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WMCA0 -
Is it safe to 301 redirect old domain to new domain after a manual unnatural links penalty?
I have recently taken on a client that has been manually penalised for spammy link building by two previous SEOs. Having just read this excellent discussion, http://www.seomoz.org/blog/lifting-a-manual-penalty-given-by-google-personal-experience I am weighing up the odds of whether it's better to cut losses and recommend moving domains. I had thought under these circumstances it was important not to 301 the old domain to the new domain but the author (Lewis Sellers) comments on 3/4/13 that he is aware of forwards having been implemented without transferring the penalty to the new domain. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/lifting-a-manual-penalty-given-by-google-personal-experience#jtc216689 Is it safe to 301? What's the latest thinking?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ewan.Kennedy0 -
Redirect old .net domain to new .com domain
I have a quick question that I think I know the answer to but I wanted to get some feedback to make sure or see if there's additional feedback. The long and short of it is that I'm working with a site that currently has a .net domain that they've been running for 6 years. They've recently bought a .com of the same name as well. So the question is: I think it's obviously preferable to keep the .net and just direct the .com to it. However, if they would prefer to have the .com domain, is 301'ing the .net to the .com going to lose a lot of the equity they've built up in the site over the past years? And are there any steps that would make such a move easier? Also, if you have any tips or insight just into a general transition of this nature it would be much appreciated. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BrandLabs0 -
Different domains for multilingual website
Hey guys, A site that I'm currently working on as different domains for each website language. So for example: word1word2.com for the english version word3word4.com for the french version word5word6.com for spanish version .... Is it better to move all of the different languages to the same domain and use subfolders for each language /fr/... Please note that the domains being used bring in organic traffic as well as they are EMDs. Thank You.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BruLee0