Merging two sites into a new one: best way?

[delta44]

Hi,

I have one small blog on a specific niche and let's call it firstsite.com (.com extension) and it's hosted on my server.

I am going to takeover a second blog on same niche but with lots more links, posts, authority and traffic. But it his on a .info domain and let's call it secondsite.info and for now it's on a different server.

I have a third domain .com where I would like join both blogs. Domain is better and reflects niche better and let's call it thirdsite.com

How should I proceed to have the best result?

I was thinking of creating a new account at my server with domain thirdsite.com

After that upload all content from secondsite.info and go to google webmaster to let they know that site now sits on a new domain. Also do a full 301 redirect. Should it be page by page or just one 301 redirect?

And finally insert posts (they are not many) from firstsite.com on thirdsite.com and do specific redirects. Is this a good option?

Or should I first move secondsite.info to my server and keep updating it and only a few weeks later make transition to thirdsite.com?

I am worried that it could be too much changes at once.

[BeardoCo]

I would take the new sites and recreate the posts with identical information.  I would then redirect each old website posts permanently to the new posts on the new website.  I think you would lose a lot of link juice if you were just to redirect to a homepage.

[delta44]

Thanks for replying.

I would not redirect secondsite.info to homepage. I would maintain all urls so I would be just moving site to a new domain keeping all urls active. On the firstsite.com I would do redirect on each post to new post created on thirdsite.com.

And homepage of firstsite.com to thirdsite.com. But I am worried that this could hurt rankings.

[OlegKorneitchouk]

You will lose some link authority that comes with 301 redirects but if the new domain is worth the branding and potential gain of future backlinks, you should go for it.

As BeardoCo said, you need to replicate/recreate the posts from the first two sites onto the third and have individual, page specific redirects set up. This would conserve as much relevancy and link authority as possible.

Also take note that your traffic will most likely tank for 2 weeks while G deals with the site transition. Don't panic, rankings will return within 3 weeks.

Make sure you tell google you changed domains and set up 301 redirects as soon as you do that. Otherwise, you can get hit with a penalty for creating too many pages too quickly + content is duplicate from the other two sites.

Good luck!