What is the best way to consolidate two websites into one?

[Ryan-Ricketts]

Someone within our company's IT department just sent me some SEO advice that I believe is bogus. Can someone let me know if my initial gut-check is correct?

We have two websites selling two identical catalogs of products but branded differently (color scheme, wording, etc.) like this:

www.one.com
www.two.com

We want to shut down the second website.

I think we should set up 301 redirects from all pages on the second site to corresponding (relevant) pages on the first. In theory, this would pass over 90% of the earned link juice from one to the other.

Here is what my IT peer said:

"We could keep www.two.com set up indefinitely and just have it as the same web site as www.one.com (so two URLs but one site). This would help alleviate any issues with search engine results, etc. (Although I believe Ryan would agree this does impact www.one.com's rankings a bit, but shouldn't be a problem as long as we don't advertise both.) Google doesn't know they are on the same site, so you could technically get away with it. And it helps in indexing multiple pages on our sites."

... but wouldn't this be a big no-no because of the massive amounts of duplicate content it would create?

[Highland]

I agree with you. Keeping a second site with duplicate content makes no sense. Just 301 two.com to one.com (preserving URLs like two.com/widgets redirects to one.com/widgets) and you should have no problems.

Advertising has nothing to do with indexation. Google actively looks for domains (they are a registrar after all) and spiders them unless you explicitly tell them not to (i.e. robots.txt)

[Ryan-Ricketts]

Thanks for the validation, Highland. I'm hoping others will chime in, too!

[KeriMorgret]

Wow, that reminds me of the time developers told me Matt Cutts was wrong, that I should not redirect non-www to www, that any redirects were bad for search engines, and the more pages in the search engine the better, and wondered why my real issue with my support request was.

I'd push for the 301s, and I'm also interested to hear what others have to say.

[Ryan-Ricketts]

Thanks, Keri! Yeah... sometimes I think SEO needs to be a certification for IT folks...

[evolvingSEO]

Hey Ryan

Just finally getting to this, thanks for reaching out on Twitter and asking for my input. It seems like everyone here has already helped you out, and I do agree

Only thing I'd add, is remember 301 redirects are not only for engines but for the users so always be sure they make sense from a UX point of view.

And also, be sure this doesn't create a chain of redirects. If 301s were already in place on the site you're redirecting from, always try to redirect from the original source, like this;

DO THIS:

www.one.com/original-page.html ----> www.two.com/real-page/

www.one.com/new-same-as-original/ ----> www.two.com/real-page/

NOT THIS:

www.one.com/original-page.html ---> www.one.com/new-same-as-original/ ----> www.two.com/real-page/

Communicate this to IT as best as you can, as its been said by Cutts to avoid chains of 301s if possible.

Hope this all helps, let us know!

-Dan