Hi all... I have 2 web sites currently, let's say a.com and b.com (sorry for the privacy!).... here are some characteristics so you can help me best: - b.com can be characterized as a subset of a.com, but is a large biz on its own - they have both been around for about the same time, same quality, very similar content structure and effort, and both are horrible at SEO right now - they are both in the competitive area of promotional products in the middle of the general marketing world, i.e., no specialization in any particular niche, i.e., we deal with all and every request for any product that can be promoted or logo'ed... We want to spend a little to get these sites up and optimized instead wasting more money on PPC ads right now in this economy... no one is clicking and converting off those now, so my thinking is to build up a site so that a few months down the line, they will come up much higher on organic search... I am thinking of starting local first, maybe within the county and city, and then maybe expanding later if the budget allows. So the first step, and thus my question here is, even though a and b can be separate categories and separate web sites, isnt it more prudent to join them and spend all my resources on promoting that one URL, and keep "b" as a subset of "a"? And if I do this, do I totally get rid of b.com, or do I still redirect it to a.com? Is it better to make a subdomain or produce a new one like b.a.com? I just need to know the best way to handle this and get it out of the way so then I can really start my efforts on SEO and marketing. Thanks!
Doesn't matter if you keep them separate or not, sub domains have different PR then the top level domain. If they're really that different you might as well keep them separate. If they were someone similar if you merged the content of b.com to the a.com site (on the top level domain, you could use a sub directory like a.com/b/) and promoted a.com they would both benefit.
you want to pass the pr you should use redirecting with 301 this will pass all the pr and ranking to the new url.