Forum

[fisherj7777]

Hi,
Is there a way to combine two sites and maintain the page rank that I have gained?

I have a PR1 site that I would like to move into a new site that has a totally different take. So, I am really just using the content on the first site to populate the second site.
Thoughts?
Thanks,
Jeff

 

[wollowra]

Hi Jeff,
In my opinion, no not really.
You may have 50 or 100 links pointing to the domain that has the pagerank of 1.
You can certainly combine the content into the new page and take down your old site but you won't be able to transfer pagerank.
If you can, then I would certainly like to know how..that would be handy and allot of webmasters would be jumping for joy.
You could keep the old site up and add the rel=canonical link to the html so that search engines know it is duplicate content but really what's the point... Unless you have your domains hosted on separate class C servers and IP's and have the old page link to the new page.. but the pagerank transferred would be almost non existent.



Regards
Troy

 

[faradina]

Well, if the content is exactly the same but you are just changing the URL, then do 301 redirection.

 

[wollowra]

Hi Fara,
That will not transfer pagerank though will it?.
A 301 redirect can be used for links but won't you need to contact any sites that link to you and change the URL's linking to you for PR transfer. Isn't that highly impractical if you have 100 linkbacks.
Regards
Troy

 

[faradina]

Actually, with 301 redirects, the rankings will be preserved if the content is not changed drastically. For more information about 301 redirects you can go to http://www.affilorama.com/site-building/301-redirects

 

[wollowra]

By golly you are right Fara,
I have not actually done a 301 on any of my sites but one of my friends did and he said he lost his PR 2. This was about 3 mths ago.
However, I just spoke to him then on the phone and he said his page rank was back after 2 or 3 mths.
So it must take a little time for PR to come back.
You learn something everyday..
Thx Fara.

Regards
Troy

 

[wollowra]

Just a little update on this...
Apparently, a 301 redirect does not transfer ALL pagerank over due to loss of link equity.
See this recent Matt Cutts interview exert ..
http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/021832.html

Regards
Troy