Merging Two Sites: Need Help!

[KH2017]

I have two existing e-commerce sites. The older one, is built on the Yahoo platform and had limitations as far as user experience. The new site is built on the Magento 2 platform. We are going to be using SLI search for our search and navigation on the new Magento platform. SLI wants us to 301 all of our categories to the hosted category pages they will create, that will have a URL structure akin to site.com/shop/category-name.html.

The issue is: If I want to merge the two sites, I will have to do a 301 to the category pages of the new site, which will have 301s going to the category pages hosted by SLI. I hope this makes sense!

The way I see it, I have two options:

1. Do a 301 from the old domain to categories of the new domain, and have the new domain's categories 301 to the SLI categories;

or,

2. I can do my 301s directly to the SLI hosted category pages.

The downside of #1 is that I will be doing two 301s, and I know I will lose more link juice as a result. The upside of #1, is that if decide not to use SLI in the future, it is one less thing to worry about. The downside of #2, is that I will be directing all the category pages from the old site to a site I do not ultimately control.

I appreciate any feedback.

[Guest]

This post is deleted!