Combining Multiple Sites Without Losing Traffic?

[tyealia]

Hey, everyone, I wonder if anyone had any success with this, can I combine two relevant affiliate sites with little to no loss in traffic? I have one affiliate site in a niche lets use the common example Paintball and another in a higher up related niche ex. shooting. Can I move all the content to the shooting site from the paintball and 301 all pages while maintaining rankings and traffic or will I see huge fluctuations and losses in traffic?

I have only been able to find one case study on this and the person saw 50% of traffic and rankings transfer over with big dips. Any opinions or insights greatly appreciated!

 

[CCarter]

What’s the average daily traffic for each site from organic search?

 

[JamaicanMoose]

I would keep them separate if they're getting traffic and earning. Create a paintball section with the same article topics on the shooting site. Rank both sites for paintball stuff.

 

[secretagentdad]

I’ve had more luck splitting sites up and double dipping than combining lately. Especially if you’re targeting a broad tail.

Only reason to combine is if you have some monster of a keyword you need a bazooka to rank for and you’re hella sure it’s worth more than brand or long tail visibility.

 

[bernard]

I would only do it if your authority was significantly larger on one side.

I have incorporated one pagers into larger sites though. Usually gains the same or better positions, but there can be drops.

 

[tyealia]

What’s the average daily traffic for each site from organic search?

There are two cases I wanted to possible do it for

First - Shooting site - Traffic 1500/day <----- paintball site - 100/day

Second - Shooting site traffic 100 /day (muchbetter more brandable domain) <----- paintball -100 (spammy looking domain namebut high dr page)

 

[CCarter]

The first scenario, if that truly is Google organic traffic, will work, and there will be an up boost in traffic after 30-90 days.

2nd scenario is going to tank both sites for years.

 

[bernard]

Addendum.

The sites I've done this to recently have been EMDs into brandable. Works really well.