Best Way to Consolidate Domains?

[essdee]

Hello,

My company has four websites in the same vertical and we're planning to integrate them all on our main company site.

So instead of www.siteone.com, www.sitetwo.com, www.sitethree.com, etc.

It would be www.branddomain.com/site-one, www.branddomain.com/site-two, etc.

I have a few questions...

Should we redirect the old domains to the new directories or leave the old domains and stop updating them with new content... Then have the old content, links, etc. 301 to the same content on the new site?

Should we literally move all of the content to the new directories?

Any tips are appreciated. It's probably pretty obvious that I don't have a ton of technical skills... my development team will be doing the heavy lifting. I just want to be sure we do this correctly from an SEO perspective!

Thanks for the help, please let me know if I can clarify anything.

E

[RobertFisher]

essdee

I would suggest that you 301 each url from each of the current domains to a url on the new domain that is relevant to that domain. So, if on SiteOne.com and Sitetwo.com you have pages regarding /muffin-making/ and on the BrandSite.com you have muffin-construction. 301 SiteOne.com/muffin-making to BrandSite.com/muffin-construction and 301 SiteTwo.com/muffin-making to BrandSite.com/muffin-construction.

If you had some pages that were irrelevant in terms of links or no directory similar, etc. you could redirect to homepage or other relevant page. In case I misunderstood you, when you do 301's, you leave the old sites up but add no new content.

Remember you are doing this url to url in the .htaccess file of each.

Hope it helps,

[eyepaq]

We had a similar approach and the decision to merge all domains into one was to minimize link building efforts .

After all the domains were 301 redirected to the new one, the new domain received so much PR equity that the rankings skyrocketed. So yes, my suggestion is to 301 redirect all the domains to the new one especially if siteone.com, sitetwo.com etc have some authority. It will work for sure.

Should we literally move all of the content to the new directories?

** If technically that's ok then yes. by ok I mean easy to do. Also old domains should just be 301 redirected to the new appropriate pages from the new domain.

It#s just my opinion but again we had a similar approach even if from different reasons and it worked like a charm.

[essdee]

Ok, thanks for the answer...

Do you think I should 301 the root domains or just 301 the content pages?

[essdee]

Robert, thanks. That definitely answers my question. The biggest thing was whether or not users can access rootdomain.com or if that gets redirected to the new directory as well.

If I understand your answer, you're saying leave the root domain or index page, etc. up there, redirect the content to the new directories and just stop updating the old domain... Right?

Thanks!

[RobertFisher]

Leave the site up. It won't show because of redirects. No new content.

[essdee]

Ok, thanks again. BIG HELP!!