What are the possible effects of a small blog migration on an existing link profile?

[JordanMcFadyen]

Hi all,

We're in the process of a small migration of blog content, and I'm interested to know how the change will affect our link profile.

We currently have a small blog on a separate domain from our main business website. This small blog (with around 248 pages and a 14 DA) was originally set up many years ago to support the main business site, however we've reviewed our content strategy to start incorporating the posts from this site to our main business domain.

As this small blog was set up as a support to the main domain, it contains many links to our main domain which will essentially disappear once the content has been migrated.

We're following all best practices in this migration, however there is one questions which is still unclear with this process. Will this small migration of content and loss of hundreds of links from one domain have a negative effect on our existing link profile of our main business site?

[EGOL]

Here is what I would be thinking if I owned that blog....

It has been out there for many years, has around 248 posts and has only accumulated a domain authority of only 14.  That tells me that the blog is probably not a vibrant asset.   It has probably attracted very few links, has not attracted much attention, pulls in very little traffic and refers almost no traffic to the primary domain.

A link from this blog will be worth very little.  The second link will be worth less than the first, the third less than the second and the 100th link will be worth almost nothing - that is if the links are branded links.   If the links are keyworded and that blog is loaded down with them, it is possible that the links could be passing poison to the main site.

So, before I spent any effort on this site and its content, I would look at the analytics and see if the blog pulls any traffic, identify the valuable posts and at the same time identify posts that have less value than the cost of moving them.

If there are some valuable posts and they are moved with 301 redirects placed permanently on the old server then the move might have a positive benefit to the main site.  At the same time, I would not hesitate to prune posts that pull no traffic, serve little business purpose, or have attracted no external links.

Effect on the link profile of the main site?  If the blog site has very few incoming links of its own that are from domains that are not already linking to the main site, then those links might be useful if they are 301 redirected.  But, it depends upon the quality of the links.  The DA of the domain is 14.  I would not expect much.  I would treat this as a salvage job that might cost more than its value, rather than an opportunity to recover treasure.

[JordanMcFadyen]

Great advice, cheers!