Hi, I just bought a site (my-best-blue-widgets.com) with ~ 800 inlinks and PR= 3 that has same keywords and similar content as my existing site (blue-widgets.com). The question is now: 1. Do I run both sites in parallel with similar content OR 2. do I do 301 redirects from my-best-blue-widgets.com to blue-widgets.com? Will running both sites in parallel double my income or is is better to send the bought site's link-juice to my original site which will result in higher SERPs = higher income? S.
Difficult one. Personally I would run both in parallel and just target a slightly different angle. I think you will get more traffic than by having all on one site.
But my existing site SERP is just off the Google top-10, so maybe I could snag frontpage with the extra link juice of ~800 links linking to the new site...
I would try the redirect first, and see how it goes for a while. Then, if the results aren't stellar, you can always build a site later, and I agree with the other poster, just take a slightly different angle on the subject with the 2nd site.
It all depends on what kind of income the new site earns, if it earns anything good from it's current rankings then I wouldn't merge. A 301 means a re-evaluation of all those links, you may find Google just filters them out because the links now point to different content. If however losing the new site isn't really a big deal, go ahead and 301 the new domain and see what happens.
@teatime, @TMedia, The difficult question for me to answer is: because the keywords/content of both sites are currently practically the same - eg. blue-widgets.com and my-best-blue-widgets.com - I don't think that Google with filter out the links. In fact, as the keywords are the same, Google may not see much difference at all... So what should I do?
I would run them separately. If you do a 301 redirect, you wouldn't get the full benefit of buying the 2nd website. I doubt redirecting the new domain to the old domain would push your rankings onto page 1. Focus on building more links to your older domain. If you are on page 2, you are very close to getting good rankings. Some more work will do more than just a 301 redirect.
Seriously, we've already answered you. By 301'ing you're still taking a risk that nothing will happen and your new domain will have been a wasted investment. Yes they're similar in keywords, but no one can tell what will really happen. So therefore if you've made substantial investment in the second domain, simply keep them seperate, thats the safest option. However, if you didn't invest much or don't mind taking a risk, you can 301 and see what happens. The decision is not up to us, no one here can know whether you'll get the value from the new domain by 301'ing. It's up to you.
I wouldn't merge them if they are somewhat established. There are usually companies searching for advertising on more websites in the same niche.
You can give link between these two sites with slightly different keywords...As far as I know, google give importance to inlinks from similar/competing websites