301 - Redirecting 3 old sites to folders on a new site

[sandis.viksna]

Hello all experts,

I wonder if you had experience with merging multiple sites to a new location.

E.g. I have 3 sites in animal niche: dogs, cats, rats. I want to move them onto one domain about animals.

The 3 separate sites each have good listings and standing in SEO, like 2-3 years of age, good 500-1000 backlinks each.

So I wonder if I could unite them all 3 under one roof and create ultimate animal domain. like

animal.com/dogs/ <--- all dog domain content
animal.com/cats/ <--- all cat content
animal.com/rats/ <-- all rat content

Reason for doing this is to consolidate them and then build out even more animal categories, but instead of launching new domains for each, put them under one authority site?

What's your views / experience with similar merging situations?

Thank you.

[sijugk]

I am impressed in your strategy. It is always keep all your stuff in a single authority site. About url redirection, you are doing the right thing. I don't think there will be any other opinion.

[SnerdeyWebs]

Correct, I don't see this any other way and besides since it's done so well as it is I'm thinking it will be just fine as the content must have the bot's attention anyway

Most excellent!

[subsystems]

There are more advantages to doing this than simply merging SEO page ranking factors and combining inbound links from multiple sites. Reusing CSS, navigation, headers, footers, and other page elements makes maintaining the sites much simpler. This can leave you more time to concentrate on other more important things like IBLs.

If your sites are large you will want to consider whether to use static 301 redirect pages (like index2.htm -> /dogs/index.htm) or make use of the 404 error pages to look up the old and new urls in a database. You can redirect all your old urls with one combined 404/301 page.
Example: The new site has no index2.htm page. A visitor comes to your site via a link to that page. This triggers a 404 error which you have a programmed server page look up the requested URL and new URL and code the page as a 301 redirect headers and all. If no page is listed in the database send the usual 404 page to the browser. The 301 redirect database is far easier to maintain than hundreds or thousands of static 301 pages.

[microtekblue]

This CAN drastically screw up your SEO if not done properly.

Having a centralized site may not be the best solution. You will be destroying 3 sites to create a new site with all sorts of redirects.

That may not go over easily with Search Engine Algorithms if done at once. I would suggest do it one at a time, and see if you can regain your rankings for each site you are destroying.

This is risky IMO and I would not try this route IMHO. I would instead create a new site with new content and leave the current ones alone, while using them as a link building and promotion asset.

[webgoddess]

There are more advantages to doing this than simply merging SEO page ranking factors and combining inbound links from multiple sites. Reusing CSS, navigation, headers, footers, and other page elements makes maintaining the sites much simpler. This can leave you more time to concentrate on other more important things like IBLs.

If your sites are large you will want to consider whether to use static 301 redirect pages (like index2.htm -> /dogs/index.htm) or make use of the 404 error pages to look up the old and new urls in a database. You can redirect all your old urls with one combined 404/301 page.
Example: The new site has no index2.htm page. A visitor comes to your site via a link to that page. This triggers a 404 error which you have a programmed server page look up the requested URL and new URL and code the page as a 301 redirect headers and all. If no page is listed in the database send the usual 404 page to the browser. The 301 redirect database is far easier to maintain than hundreds or thousands of static 301 pages.

This is an interesting solution. I was going to use my .htaccess file to redirect. Is this not a good plan?

[pervezalam_mzn]

yes you can do it, i have also applied 301 redirection one of my same site with the old page name to new page name. All the keywords that ware ranking at old page now coming with new page name with the same ranking position to apply 301 redirection. All credit of old page have redirect to new page and after it we are targeting new page on same keywords. We have done it with same domain and also think that it will not give any bad effect from one domain to other domain.

[subsystems]

My server isn't setup for .htaccess. I keep promising myself to put it to rest, it's about 10 years old but still running strong. Hardware upgrades keep breeding new life into the old girl. I've decided my new server(s) will be a pair of servers running Oracle VM Server in High Availability mode with several TurnKey Linux appliances running in virtual machines. Pretty darn cool what is available for free these days. But, I digress.

I defer to others on which method is best404/301 vs .htaccess. Googling pointed me to this however. Worth a look. Hope it gives you some more guidance.
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=423650508835