Merging four sites into one... Best way to combine content?

[SDSLaw]

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.

[TakeshiYoung]

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.

[William.Lau]

Maybe keep all micro sites and just point them to one domain from there on out.

[SDSLaw]

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?

[TakeshiYoung]

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.

[KristinnD]

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!