Merging Pages and SEO

[viatrading1]

Hi,

We are redesigning our website the following way:

Before: Page A with Content A, Page B with Content B, Page C with Content C, etc
e.g. one page for each Customer Returns, Overstocks, Master Case, etc
Now: Page D with content A + B + C etc.
e.g. one long page containing all Product Conditions, one after the other

So we are merging multiples pages into one.
What is the best way to do so, so we don't lose traffic? (or we lose the minimum possible)

e.g. should we 301 Redirect A/B/C to D...?
Is it likely that we lose significant traffic with this change?

Thank you,

[LoganRay]

Hi,

Anytime a site redesign occurs, you're going to lose traffic. 301 redirects are going to be your best bet to minimize the traffic loss when you flip the switch. Where you're most likely to take a hit is from organic though, depending on what kind of content condensing you're doing, you might lose out on a lot of rankings. I would dig into Google Analytics and Search Console and see how valuable those pages are in terms of organic traffic before deciding to condense. There are definitely some good cases for this, but there's also a lot of instances where I wouldn't recommend combining 3 pages into 1.

[viatrading1]

Thank you Logan and Kristina,

What would you recommend for the pages with high traffic - just leaving them separate as they used to be?

Let's say for example I have the following numbers:

• Page A: 20,000 visits/month
• Page B: 10,000 visits/month
• Page 5,000 visits/month

After joining them in Page D - how much is it going to lose? Is Page D more likely to have 31,500 visits/month (-10% compared to previous Page A+B+C), or would it have more like 20-25,000?

Also - would you recommend keeping Page A/B/C separate so they are more targeted but not accessible from frontend (to avoid losing much traffic), then only link from frontend Page D with a different URL?
(and could this have duplicate issues though...?)

Cheers,

[KristinaKledzik]

It's hard to say how much traffic you'll lose from the merge. Like Logan said, you'll definitely lose a bit when you first move, but long term, you'll need to look at your competition to figure out if it's better to keep the pages separate or combine them.

I don't recommend keeping pages A, B, and C if you're going to hide them from the main structure of your site. Pages get most of their Page Authority from internal links (unless they're link bait), so they won't be able to rank anyway.

That said, here's how I'd estimate the loss of traffic from the move:

1. Use Google Search Console to determine the primary keyword/s for page A, B, and C
2. Use a tool like Open Site Explorer to determine the number of links A, B, and C have. (Bonus: look at the websites linking to A, B, or C. If those are resource pages, there's a good chance their webmaster will update their links to page D, which will help with the traffic dip. If they're from news articles, you'll probably have to rely on 301s.)
3. Search for each of those top keywords and look at your competition. Does the competition closely target the term? Will page D seem as relevant to the keyword as A, B, or C did?
4. Now, look at the Page Authorities of the competition for each keyword. Will page D, which will have a combo of links from A, B, and C, blow your competition out of the water? About match it? Still be a bit behind?
5. Here's the part that's really tough: for each keyword, estimate where page D would rank, given how well it targets the keyword and how many inbound links it has.
6. Estimate the % increase or drop in traffic based on adjusted click through rate. You can find this by playing around in Google Search Console to find a time when your site ranked in a different position, or by using average click through rates, like here.
7. Once you're done, put together your estimated percent increases or drops in traffic to estimate how the new page will perform. (I recommend you look at a percent change because adding up totals only for top keywords won't take long tail keywords into account, and you'll almost definitely come up with a much lower count than you're currently getting.)

Not the easiest process in the world, and your estimate will almost definitely be wrong, since you make a lot of assumptions along the way. But it should give you an idea of whether you'll eventually gain or lose traffic from the move, once that initial Googlebot confusion wears off.

Hope this makes sense! Let me know if you have any questions!

Kristina