website merge

As a business owner, you will face various scenarios where you must merge a website. Perhaps, you acquired a new business that needs to be integrated into your current one. Or you are trying to rebrand your company. Either way, you are now in trouble of losing a lot of opportunities if you merge it wrongfully. Over the years, businesses have created potential security threats to their website and SEO while merging. And while consolidating sites is simple, one wrong migration or merging can leave your website in disarray. This can result in page errors, unorganized content, and eventual traffic loss. So, to help you with that, I wrote this article! Join me, understand why it’s necessary, and learn 9 easy steps to consolidate or merge your website.   Why do we consolidate websites? Pros and Cons of Merging your websites? Before we dive into how to merge your website, let’s first discuss the pros and cons of incorporating a website. As mentioned earlier, combining a website can affect certain factors of your site – including SEO, branding, etc. Likewise, here are the pros and cons of merging your websites: Pros of Merging Your Websites 1.    Funneled Link Juice Link Juice is one of the most important aspects of SEO that help rank your website better. It allows users to circumnavigate from one page to another. Likewise, it increases a page’s value by increasing its authority to search engines and crawlers. In this case, both of your links are spread across two websites. Merging these websites will enable you to combine two link juice profiles, making them more powerful. 2.    Consistent Branding Managing two websites at a time can be troubling in maintaining your brand consistent. One website could send a different message to your audience than the other. Thus, merging your websites can help avoid confusion amongst consumers regarding who they should trust or patronize. Moreover, this can help keep messaging linear across the internet and help customers create an action that can be fruitful for your company. 3.    Site management What’s worse than managing a website? Managing multiple websites! Handling various websites might affect your focus on content development, marketing, advertising, etc. It could negatively affect your revue Cons of Merging Your Websites 1.    Possible Loss of Domain Ranking A website migration is not a trivial task. It can be a time-consuming, expensive and frustrating process. You must ensure that the new site is SEO-friendly and has all the necessary pages – without any broken links or errors. You will lose your domain authority if you migrate your site from one domain to another. This means that your old domain will lose its rank in search engines, and it will take time for the new domain to rank again. This is why it’s crucial to have an SEO plan before migrating your website from one domain to another. 2.    Wide-ranging 301 Redirecting When merging a website with another, some content may be duplicated. Thus 301 redirects are necessary. 301 redirects are a great way to indicate that a page on your website has moved to another location. Likewise, it is also a great way to tunnel traffic or link juice from another website to another. However, too many 301 redirects can significantly affect your website’s SEO.   9 Steps in Merging Your Websites Regardless of your reason behind merging your website, here are nine-step guides on how to integrate two websites. Step 1 – Create a sitemap for your new website The sitemap is a spatial representation of the website and its navigation. It is a critical component that helps visitors and crawlers find their way around the site. A good sitemap should be easy to read and update and not require much time to create. Likewise, when merging your websites, a sitemap can also ensure that all components or pages required for your business are included. Step 2 – Prepare your dominant domain A domain name is an essential factor when merging your websites. You can either choose between two existing website domain names or create a new one that will reflect your merged company. You should ponder the subsequent factors before you decide on a domain name: Make sure your domain name does not have any spaces or special characters. Choose something easy to remember and pronounce. Make sure that your domain name is not too long. Avoid using numbers in your domain name because they can be difficult for people to remember. Step 3 – Conduct a content audit and new web content strategy Next is making a content audit on both of your websites. A content audit helps you recognize all of the content and your websites. It also evaluates which are of quality and must be transferred to your newly merged website. Likewise, A content audit when merging your websites helps identify gaps and find out what content is missing and needs improvement. It also helps to know how visitors navigate your site and which pages they visit most often. A content audit can be done manually or with software help. Step 4 – Create an SEO audit and plan Auditing the SEO of a website before merging is vital because it helps assess the site’s current state and how it can be amended. The audit will help identify what needs to be done to optimize the site and how much time would be required to carry out these improvements. Moreover, it also enables you to see where you are concerning your competitors and assess your marketing efforts. You can conduct an SEO audit using free SEO tools such as SEMrush, Ahrefs, Moz, etc. Likewise, before merging your websites, an SEO plan must also be made. Before, two of your websites probably had diverse SEO strategies such as keyword focus, links, on-page SEO metrics, etc. If you are planning on merging your websites, it is crucial to have a united strategy for the new domain. You should have an in-complexity understanding of the