How to maintain organic performance when merging multiple websites

[siteadmin]

Migrations and mergers can be unpredictable. Here's how to identify and prioritize your most valuable pages for your new site.

Developing a new organizational structure when merging two or more businesses is a complicated affair, but if your new business is going to rely on its website to drive sales, leads or audience engagement, then defining a website structure that preserves and builds upon the performance of any existing websites that the merging parties own should be a top priority. With that in mind, creating a sitemap that draws on the strengths of the current websites will help to give the new business/brand the initial visibility it needs in order to be successful.

Over the years, I have managed many website migrations, but in the past year, I have had the opportunity to manage the successful migration of a merger of three different businesses/websites into one new website. In fact, I have been lucky enough to successfully manage this scenario twice in the past year and I’ve learned a lot in the process. By cherry-picking the most valuable pages to develop the sitemap, one project resulted in the website retaining nearly 100% of the traffic the previous domains were getting (there was some loss where previous services became irrelevant and therefore pages were removed), and the other project resulted in the website increasing traffic levels post-migration. For what was essentially two entirely new brands, this gave them a hell of a head start when entering their respective markets.

While the migration strategy involves a lot more than just structuring a sitemap, when it comes to mergers this is a particular area of importance, and it needs the appropriate level of analysis to ensure the migration is a success. Get this part right and the new website will be well on its way to retaining and even improving upon the performance of the merging sites.


What do you have to search for when structuring the brand new sitemap?

So, what precisely qualifies as a “beneficial” current web page, and which pages are we seeking to retain? This will look completely different from web site to web site, however as a basic rule of thumb, I take a look at the next:

Visitors drivers. Pages which might be already driving numerous visitors to the prevailing web sites are clearly going to be vital, notably pages which might be driving visitors that’s nonetheless related to the brand new enterprise’s providing. Even when the excessive traffic-driving pages are barely much less related (however not fully irrelevant) to the brand new enterprise’s providing, it could be price holding them to assist construct model consciousness within the early days. This gained’t work for companies/merchandise which might be not supplied, however for loosely associated weblog matters and many others. it may be a great model builder to maintain that visitors flowing by way of the positioning.

Convertors. Pages with a excessive variety of conversions/conversion charge ought to be thought-about, so long as what customers have been changing for remains to be related to the brand new enterprise. These pages can hold the gross sales/inquiries and many others. rolling in while the positioning builds its rankings/visibility up in different areas.

Rating pages. The brand new web site will possible have a goal key phrase record, however your present websites would possibly already be rating for a few of these key phrases. Discovering pages that rank for beneficial key phrases, whether or not they have excessive search volumes or not (possibly they don’t drive numerous visitors, however they appeal to the RIGHT visitors that converts) and whether or not they have excessive rankings or not (if a web page ranks place 36 for a goal key phrase, it may be developed and improved to rank higher, somewhat than attempting to start out fully from scratch) might be an vital a part of the technique.

Pages with backlinks. Backlinks are a giant a part of what strengthens a site over time, so in the event you don’t convey throughout pages which have backlinks, then the brand new web site might be lacking out on all of that potential authority-building goodness. This offers the brand new web site a shortcut to rapidly constructing a wholesome backlink profile.

Precedence web page supporters. Some pages might seem to don’t have any worth as they get no visitors, conversions, rankings or backlinks, however they could be the supporting structure serving to to carry up the rankings of different pages. Related and high-quality content material which hyperlinks to precedence pages which might be already rating ought to be retained the place doable to make sure the precedence web page’s rankings don’t crumble as a result of the structure has been deconstructed.

New enterprise providing/priorities. In fact, the sitemap must look to the long run, and never simply to the previous, so any new choices or priorities for the newly fashioned enterprise will have to be thought-about inside the sitemap, and pages will have to be constructed out inside the proposed structure to cater for these new choices.

[agelace4]

What you prefer ? Free or Paid Traffic

[ArthurNem]

Nothing is more satisfying than having free traffic earning for you. That being said, paid traffic can help expedite matters if you have the necessary budget. It really depends what you're doing. Both require trial and error. though.