Redirecting Entire Microsite Content to Main Site Internal Pages?

[RightlookCreative]

I am currently working on improving site authority for a client site. The main site has significant authority, but I have learned that the company owns several other resource-focused microsites which are stagnant, but which have accrued significant page authority of their own (thought still less than the main site).

Realizing the fault in housing good content on a microsite rather than the main site, my thought is that I can redirect the content of the microsites to internal pages on the main site as a "Resources" section.

I am wondering a: if this is a good idea and b: the best way to transfer site authority from these microsites. I am also wondering how to organize the content and if, for example, an entire microsite domain (e.g. microsite.com) should in fact be redirected to internal resource pages (e.g. mainsite.com/resources).

Any input would be greatly appreciated!

[BenFox]

I would definitely bring the content onto the main domain.

As far as how to structure the folders - it depends on the content. If it sits quite naturally as a stand alone section then a resources folder would make sense.

[inhouseseo]

By content, are you talking about category and product descriptions? or articles, guides, etc.? Both?

[inhouseseo]

BTW, have you thought about doing a 301 redirect to a relevant subfolder of the main site?

For example, the main site is furniture.com, microsite is sofas.com, you redirect sofas.com to furniture.com/sofas.html.

[RightlookCreative]

Thank you for the quick response. Each microsite is pretty comprehensive, so I think they would fit well as a single resources section or as independent resource sections  within each main site product category.

However, each site is also branded differently, would there be any risks to avoid when changing design elements surrounding the text, titles, meta, etc?

*I should also note that some of the microsites do draw some rankings because of direct URL matches for some of our valuable keywords. That said, they contain good content that should be used to build authority for the main site. I am hoping redirecting won't hurt current listings too much, or that the authority boost gained from redirection will be more valuable than keyword listings for microsites.

[RightlookCreative]

Thanks, what you've mentioned is basically my end goal. To answer your first question: the content on the microsites is mostly articles and informational content.

To build upon your furniture.com example: The main site is currently broken into relevant subfolders, but the informational content that should be there is living on the respective microsites. My goal is to move the microsite resource content such that content on sofas.com would be accessible from the main site via **furniture.com/sofas/resources **(for example).

An alternative could be to build an independent furniture.com/resources page and then build out subcategories from there. However, I think it is better UX to have the resources delivered relative to each category.

[inhouseseo]

If it is relevant to Sofas, you might be able to put it directly on that page. But yeah, having relevant content for each category makes sense for the user.

You can move the content over and the do 301 page-to-page redirects to the main site.

i.e

Sofas.com to furniture.com/sofas

contemporary sofas to furniture.com/contemporary-sofas

Good luck!

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Sounds like you've got a good handle on your strategy, which to me seems sound.

Couple points of advice:

1. Make sure the microsites have a clean backlink profile. Use OSE or another tool to check for paid links, spammy article submissions, etc. You want to make sure not to transfer any bad links to your main site.

2. Do your best to 301 redirect individual URLs to specific URLs on your new site, keeping care to maintain the subject matter, content, structure, title tags etc. If these change too much, Google will interpret this as a change of subject, and you may lose any transferred authority.

3. Follow best practices for migrating domains.

Hope this helps. Sounds like your on the right track. Best of luck with your SEO!

[RightlookCreative]

Thank you for the tips and encouragement!

I feel a lot more confident about this project now, but if you could address one final question, I am still a little concerned about transfer of domain authority since one of the microsites gets top listings and nearly rivals the main site.

I realize domain authorities will by no means be combined, but I'm hoping the new inside pages don't lose so much page authority that they drop in the serps and, more importantly, that a significant impact can be made to the domain authority of the main site.

Basically, the main site is optimized and listing for our most valuable keywords and I'm hoping that the transfer of the microsite pages can provide a boost at the domain level.

Any insight would be much appreciated!