Ideas on Best way to move microsite content but preserve the microsite.

[stephenfishman]

I have an exact keyword match domain-

It has decent moz rank, original content pertaining to custom made furniture and has specific furniture products for sale.

I want to move the specific products for sale to my main site but keep the general content on the microsite.

It's a little different than redirecting All the Pages, isn't it?  Any ideas on best steps to take? Or mistakes to avoid?

Thank You

Handcrafter

[RyanKent]

Can you elaborate a bit more as to why you desire to make this change?

If I am understanding you correctly, you currently sell furniture items on both your main site and your microsite. You wish to move all sales to your main site. Is that correct?

How many pages do you have in each site?

Is there any specific reason for keeping the microsite going? Does the microsite focus on just furniture as well?

[stephenfishman]

The microsite has an exact brand name url.

The main site has a variety of handcrafted products with better navigation and shopping cart.

So I think I could keep the ranking for the microsite by leaving some static content on it.  Like background about the brand, news about the brand  and perhaps info on how to order custom products

All the categories of furniture and products would migrate to the main  site where the best shopping cart (and higher rankings) are found.  The brand name from the micosite would become a category of product on the main site. And I hope benefit from redirects and links from the microsite.

Does that make more sense?

[RyanKent]

I am a strong believer in merging your sites and combining your backlink strength into one strong site. The sole reason you are keeping the microsite is because of the domain name.

What my recommendation would be for the microsite is to host it with a different company then your main site (different C block). Narrow the site down to a kick ass home page along with a few pages of quality content about the brand. Use this site to link to your main site. There is no reason to link from your main site to the brand site. If you want to talk about the brand on your main site, perhaps offer a single page summary of the various pages from the other site.

[stephenfishman]

That sounds straightforward. About the C Block- That's something I never have really understood.  Both sites are now hosted by the same hosting company.  Would they have different C blocks? Or would I swittch the microsite to a different host someplace like godaddy?

[RyanKent]

Think of URLs are formed in the following pattern: AAA.BBB.CCC.DDD

When you see you URL as 100.200.222.050 then your C block is "222".

Each domain company usually is assigned 1 C block for all their servers. So yes, you would need to use a different company for your second site.