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.
Merging four sites into one... Best way to combine content?
-
First of all, thank you in advance for taking the time to look at this.
The law firm I work for once took a "more is better" approach and had multiple websites, with keyword rich domains. We are a family law firm, but we have a specific site for "Arizona Child Custody" as one example. We have four sites.
All four of our sites rank well, although I don't know why. Only one site is in my control, the other three are managed by FindLaw. I have no idea why the FindLaw sites do well, other than being in the FindLaw directory. They have terrible spammy page titles, and using Copyscape, I realize that most of the content that FindLaw provides for it's attorneys are "spun articles."
So I have a major task and I don't know how to begin.
- First of all, since all four sites rank well for all of the desired phrases-- will combining all of that power into one site rocket us to stardom? The sites all rank very well now, even though they are all technically terrible. Literally.
I would hope that if I redirect the child custody site (as one example) to the child custody overview page on the final merged site, we would still maintain our current SERP for "arizona child custody lawyer."
I have strongly encouraged my boss to merge our sites for many reasons. One of those being that it's playing havoc with our local places. On the other hand, if I take down the child custody site, redirect it, and we lose that ranking, I might be out of a job.
Finally, that brings me down to my last question.
- As I mentioned, the child custody site is "done" very poorly. Should I actually keep the spun content and redirect each and every page to a duplicate on our "final" domain, or should I redirect each page to a better article? This is the part that I fear the most.
I am considering subdomains. Like, redirecting the child custody site to childcustody.ourdomain.com-- I know, for a fact, that will work flawlessly. I've done that many times for other clients that have multiple domains. However, we have seven areas of practice and we don't have 7 nice sites. So child custody would be the only legal practice area that has it's own subdomain. Also, I wouldn't really be doing anything then, would I? We all know 301 redirects work.
What I want is to harness all of this individual power to one mega-site.
Between the four sites, I have 800 pages of content.
I need to formulate a plan of action now, and then begin acting on it. I don't want to make the decision alone. Anybody care to chime in?
Thank you in advance for your help. I really appreciate the time it took you to read this.
-
I like this strategy. As you add new better content, you can add nice links from the old bad content. You can have a constant source of links from relevant sites. Sweet!
-
Well, Google isn't going to punish you for owning 4 different websites, it's perfectly fine to own multiple web properties that drive traffic to your business. In fact, you're diversifying your risk by having multiple sites, since if one drops in rankings, you still have 3 others.
If the other sites are spammy, why would you want that content on your main site anyway? Just include links from the 3 other sites, and point them all to your flagship site. That way your main site still gets the SEO boost, and you can build it out however you want, while you don't lose traffic from the other 3 sites.
-
Thank you Takeshi.
The reason I want to merge them is because we are a major law firm in Phoenix and I think it's search engine spam to try and nail google with niche content sites. Because, really, other than the front page optimization-- they really aren't "niche" sites at all. They just have niche domains and a niche front page description.
Beyond that, nothing but spun content and crappy pages with titles like this:
Phoenix Arizona Divorce Lawyer | Child Custody Lawyer | Child Custody Help | Phoenix Tempe Mesa Tucson | Child Custody Lawyers
I feel that it's "index" spam for us to have multiple sites. What is the "white hat" argument for having multiple websites, for one law firm, in one major metropolitan area? How could I justify it to Matt Cutts?
-
Maybe keep all micro sites and just point them to one domain from there on out.
-
Sounds like a big and risky endeavor, although there could be potential benefits.
Why are you considering merging the sites if they are already ranking well for their keywords? Are they not ranking high enough? If it ain't broke...
A better strategy might be to just build more links and add more content to the sites you have. Another area you could focus your efforts on is conversion rate optimization. You're already getting all this traffic for desirable keywords, so you can boost your client's ROI by figuring out how to turn more of that traffic into leads.
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
-
Posting same content multiple blogs or multiple website - 2018
Submitting same content on multiple site or blog using original source Links. Its good or bad in term on Ranking and SEO. Can we post same content on multiple website with orginal post reference same like Press release site technique.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | HuptechWebseo0 -
Should I delete older posts on my site that are lower quality?
Hey guys! Thanks in advance for thinking through this with me. You're appreciated! I have 350 pieces of Cornerstone Content that has been a large focus of mine over the last couple years. They're incredibly important to my business. That said, less experienced me did what I thought was best by hiring a freelance writer to create extra content to interlink them and add relevancy to the overall site. Looking back through everything, I am starting to realize that this extra content, which now makes up 1/3 my site, is at about 65%-70% quality AND only gets a total of about 250 visitors per month combined -- for all 384 articles. Rather than spending the next 9 months and investing in a higher quality content creator to revamp them, I am seeing the next best option to remove them. From a pros perspective, do you guys think removing these 384 lower quality articles is my best option and focusing my efforts on a better UX, faster site, and continual upgrading of the 350 pieces of Cornerstone Content? I'm honestly at a point where I am ready to cut my losses, admit my mistakes, and swear to publish nothing but gold moving forward. I'd love to hear how you would approach this situation! Thanks 🙂
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ryj0 -
Site Footer Links Used for Keyword Spam
I was on the phone with a proposed web relaunch firm for one of my clients listening to them talk about their deep SEO knowledge. I cannot believe that this wouldn’t be considered black-hat or at least very Spammy in which case a client could be in trouble. On this vendor’s site I notice that they stack the footer site map with about 50 links that are basically keywords they are trying to rank for. But here’s the kicker shown by way of example from one of the themes in the footer: 9 footer links:
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RosemaryB
Top PR Firms
Best PR Firms
Leading PR Firms
CyberSecurity PR Firms
Cyber Security PR Firms
Technology PR Firms
PR Firm
Government PR Firms
Public Sector PR Firms Each link goes to a unique URL that is basically a knock-off of the homepage with a few words or at the most one sentences swapped out to include this footer link keyword phrase, sometimes there is a different title attribute but generally they are a close match to each other. The canonical for each page links back to itself. I simply can’t believe Google doesn’t consider this Spammy. Interested in your view.
Rosemary0 -
Preventing CNAME Site Duplications
Hello fellow mozzers! Let me see if I can explain this properly. First, our server admin is out of contact at the moment,
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | David-Kley
so we are having to take this project on somewhat blind. (forgive the ignorance of terms). We have a client that needs a cname record setup, as they need a sales.DOMAIN.com to go to a different
provider of data. They have a "store" platform that is hosted elsewhere and they require a cname to be
sent to a custom subdomain they set up on their end. My question is, how do we prevent the cname from being indexed along with the main domain? If we
process a redirect for the subdomain, then the site will not be able to go out and grab the other providers
info and display it. Currently, if you type in the sales.DOMAIN.com it shows the main site's homepage.
That cannot be allow to take place as we all know, having more than one domain with
exact same content = very bad for seo. I'd rather not rely on Google to figure it out. Should we just have the cname host (where its pointing at) add a robots rule and have it set to not index
the cname? The store does not need to be indexed, as the items are changed almost daily. Lastly, is an A record required for this type of situation in any way? Forgive my ignorance of subdomains, cname records and related terms. Our server admin being
unavailable is not helping this project move along any. Any advice on the best way to handle
this would be very helpful!0 -
Best URL structure for SEO for Malaysian/Singapore site on .com.au domain
Hi there I know ideally i need a .my or .sg domain, however i dont have time to do this in the interim so what would be the best way to host Malaysian content on a www.domainname.com.au website? www.domainname.com.au/en-MY
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | IsaCleanse
www.domainname.com.au/MY
domainname.com.au/malaysia
malaysia.domainname.com.au
my.domainname.com.au Im assuming this cant make the .com.au site look spammy but thought I'd ask just to be safe? Thanks in advance! 🙂0 -
Indexing content behind a login
Hi, I manage a website within the pharmaceutical industry where only healthcare professionals are allowed to access the content. For this reason most of the content is behind a login. My challenge is that we have a massive amount of interesting and unique content available on the site and I want the healthcare professionals to find this via Google! At the moment if a user tries to access this content they are prompted to register / login. My question is that if I look for the Google Bot user agent and allow this to access and index the content will this be classed as cloaking? I'm assuming that it will. If so, how can I get around this? We have a number of open landing pages but we're limited to what indexable content we can have on these pages! I look forward to all of your suggestions as I'm struggling for ideas now! Thanks Steve
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | stever9990 -
A site is using their competitors names in their Meta Keywords and Descriptions
I can't imagine this is a White Hat SEO technique, but they don't seem to be punished for it by Google - yet. How does Google treat the use of your competitors names in your meta keywords/descriptions? Is it a good idea?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | PeterConnor0 -
Rel author and duplicate content
I have a question if a page who a im the only author, my web will duplicate content with the blog posts and the author post as they are the same. ¿what is your suggestion in that case? thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | maestrosonrisas0