Combining multiple sites into one

[retired_member33]

I am planning to combine 6 minisites into one large site.

All 6 sites are specific exact match domains about traveling to a specific country and I am planning to do the following:

minisite1.co.uk > brandabledomain/country1
minisite2.co.uk > brandabledomain/country2
minisite3.co.uk > brandabledomain/country3
minisite4.co.uk > brandabledomain/country4
minisite5.co.uk > brandabledomain/country5
minisite6.co.uk > brandabledomain/country6

The idea is to redirect all the minisites to the new main website where all the content of that minisite would be shown on the country specific page on the main website.

Has anyone ever combined multiple sites into one website? Is it a good idea to do this in terms of SEO?

Thanks

 

[retired_member33]

Anyone? Have been searching online but haven't found and any decent information about merging multiple sites.

Thanks

 

[atlas]

There is a very good article about this at:
http://sugarrae.com/online-marketin...ation-or-trying-to-turn-lemons-into-lemonade/

 

[j4md0nut]

Very simple to do but dont think it will have the desired effect you would need.

1) move content to new site
2) 301 redirect each old mini site to new sub folder
3) deindex content from old site using webmaster tools (remove old urls from index)
4) submit new sitemap into webmaster tools.
5) get some new social links pointing in to those new sub directories.

I think you will find that your rankings won't come back as they used to as 301 redirects dont pass on the same ammount of weight.

hit me if you need a guide for removing those urls and moving content.

Sam

 

[IrnMary]

I am planning to combine 6 minisites into one large site.

All 6 sites are specific exact match domains about traveling to a specific country and I am planning to do the following:

minisite1.co.uk > brandabledomain/country1
minisite2.co.uk > brandabledomain/country2
minisite3.co.uk > brandabledomain/country3
minisite4.co.uk > brandabledomain/country4
minisite5.co.uk > brandabledomain/country5
minisite6.co.uk > brandabledomain/country6

The idea is to redirect all the minisites to the new main website where all the content of that minisite would be shown on the country specific page on the main website.

Has anyone ever combined multiple sites into one website? Is it a good idea to do this in terms of SEO?

Thanks

I have done it numerous times and it tends to work really well from both an SEO standpoint and it makes things a lot easier to manage.

Be sure to 301 redirect the old domains. It usually takes a good week or two for Google to pick up all the redirects and de-index the content from the old sites.

Once it's done though it's almost impossible to go back so be sure that is what you want to do.

 

[retired_member33]

Thanks guys.

The main reason is that I want to manage everything from one place and build a website that is really useful for visitors instead of having a bunch of minisites targeting a specific keyword.

The minisites have almost all dropped in the rankings and I think it is down to the fact that the websites have not been updated in a while and that the search results for this niche are all dominated by large sites on brandable domains so I think the right thing to do is to join them.

Think I will just give it a go and hope for the best