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Navigation SEO for a client that’s consolidating websites
Hi there – I'm a web developer and have a potential client that's a consultant, and they have 4 or 5 different websites currently, each tailored to a slightly different service or client. They're pretty disparate right now.
They'd like to just have 1 website that covers all of their services, and has a unified look & feel. Creating a sitemap for this new site will essentially entail reviewing all the sites and consolidating content as appropriate. One site currently has around 20 pages, another around 5, and the others are 1 page sites.
A bit of a blind spot for me is in regards to how not to lose any SEO traction for the sites that would no longer be used. My impression is that we'd create a new website using the URL from their current 5 page site.
But, what do we do with the 20 page site, and the other 1 page sites? It sounds like we'd make them go inactive so they aren't still live. But, I'm thinking there's probably inbound links to these sites, and maybe these pages could be ranking on Google and bringing in traffic.
For any inbound links, I'm assuming we could just set up 301 redirects for the sites & pages that will be removed. But, what else should be considered or done? I am just feeling a little blind about the right game plan here. Is there a good way to maintain any "SEO juice" if any of the pages on the sites (that won't be used anymore) are ranking at all?
This was just an initial sales call, so nothing with this client is formalized yet. But, it would be nice to be able to follow up with the prospect and have a game plan to propose. Or, at least, it would be helpful for me to know for future reference.
Thanks in advance for any help!
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1 Reply
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Why retain the 5 pages site?
You are correct to 301 the old URLs to the new ones, when possible retaining their content theme/topic.
Id also be tempted to put wildcard redirects on the unused domains for any legacy content and to ensure visitors/links end up at the new site.
Then once the new site/content is live and the redirects in place, mark the old ones as moved in Google Search Console.
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