Redirecting 2 established websites to 1 new one.

[EdShull]

I have 2 websites that I've built up for a few years decent DA. I'm thinking of making one new website and directing the two websites to it. Is Google going to find that suspicious, or will the new site benefit from the DA from both?

[Joseph-Green-SEO]

Hello Friend,

Are the two websites related to the content of the new site?

If yes, then its perfectly fine to 301 redirect your old website to the new one; that's what redirects are all about.

If it is unrelated, I would not do it.

I wish you all the best with your websites.

[EdShull]

Thanks for the reply. One of them is very targeted to one of the topics of the website. The other is a more broad area that is loosely connected.

My thought is to point the loosely connected one to either the homepage, or blog homepage of the new site. Then point the more relevant one to the main section of that category.

For example, if my site has a "cars" section, I'm thinking of posting a car blog to that car section of the new site. So the 301 would go to newsite.com/cars.

Will Google not like that idea?

[Joseph-Green-SEO]

My Friend,

The way you need to think of this is as a user. If a user gets this redirect, will they feel it is fair, or will they think you redirected them to not a relevant site?

That should guide you because this is the way Google looks at it as well.

Regards,

Joseph Green

[KevinBudzynski]

I agree with Joseph.  The key to 301's redirects is to redirect to a landing page that is "closely" related. If there is no closely related page, best 404 as the user (as Joseph says) may feel cheated with the 301 and bounce.  Also, a blanket 301 to a homepage is rarely a good idea.  Yes, Google has no issue w/a 301 that is closely related. Good luck!

[EdShull]

I guess I wasn't clear. I'm not just killing a website. I have two websites with a lot of content on them and years of organic linking. I have a new website I'm building. I would moe that content to the new website and properly re-direct all the pages to the right URL's on the new site.

The question is will Google not like if I re-direct and consolidate two websites, and their content, to a new website? I'd like to get the power of both websites on the new one.

[KevinBudzynski]

No, there isn't an issue with Google when you consolidate 2 sites into one. There is a slight erosion in link equity via 301, but it's nominal. Just make sure the old/new landing pages are closely related and you will be fine.

I know its nerve-racking, but make sure you do yourpyour work and fix any issues after implementation.

When you go live, I typically type site:nameofsite.com in google and click on the legacy link and make sure the old domain goes to the correct page on new site.

[willcritchlow]

Note that, in addition to what others have said here, it can often be the case that consolidating two websites in the same industry can result in less traffic than the total the two were receiving previously. This is because it's possible that both were ranking for some of the same queries before the merge, and yet the merge doesn't move the top result up (because the result above is significantly more powerful) and hence the net result for that query is just to remove one result you own from the search result page.

Just a word of caution as you model this impact.