Can my sites be merged and saved?

[juju94]

Hi everyone,
I am Julien, and a few hours ago I introduced myself in the introduction thread, mentioning that I need some guidance. I hope you guys can share some insight about what you would do.

- I have a first site, in the travel + travel photography + outdoor (mostly hiking) niches. All 3 silos are well defined. It was my very first site, that I created about 9 years ago. I managed to take it to about $200 a month in revenue with Amazon. But for the past 1-2 years, traffic has been mostly stagnating, even after some link building. The site has only 120 articles, not all targeting good keywords, which is probably why it never really took off.

Immediately after the last Google update, I lost about 25% of my traffic. Soon after, I redirected an extremely relevant photography expired domain (not the lazy way, page to page and with an acquisition page). The redirection was on for one month and traffic has just been declining until now. Ahrefs tells me I have lost 2/3 of my keywords, and I don't know where it will stop. It was probably not very smart to do this redirection at that moment because now, I don't know if my loss of traffic is because of the Google update or if the expired domain was toxic. I removed the redirection anyway just in case.

- I have a second site, in the outdoor niche, that I built on an expired domain. I put something like 150+ articles on it (probably targeting keywords that are too difficult). Traffic was still slowly growing, until the last Google update. The site lost almost all its rankings. Back to zero or almost.

My thoughts and questions:
1) I would actually love to merge the 2 sites, to create a much bigger outdoors section on the travel site. Together, it would have more than 1000 referring domains, which would be a decent amount of links. And of course, this way, I would cut costs and not spread myself thin, and focus on one site instead of 2. It would also be a good way to immediately double the amount of content on the first site. Do you think it's a good idea?

2) I could try to recover the site by following the Kitchen Sink Method. There are probably a lot of things that are not optimized properly on my site.

3) I can consider that I am back to zero (or almost) so do you think I can just bombard it with new content, starting with golden ratio keywords and basically following the SEO Avalanche Technique? I did notice that I have 2-3 keywords that never failed me and are constantly #1 on Google even today after the "penalty", and I realized recently that they are golden ratio keywords.

I apologize for the very long explanation, any insight would be highly appreciated. Thank you!
Julien

 

[Zoro]

Im new so dont put weight on my words to much on this but it feels like you have 3 solid plans already, go with the one you think you could manage?

But a 9 year old site with 120 articles sounds to me like a great site to just freshen up and kickass!

 

[Ryuzaki]

But for the past 1-2 years, traffic has been mostly stagnating, even after some link building. The site has only 120 articles, not all targeting good keywords, which is probably why it never really took off.

Have you actively worked on the site or was it essentially built with passion in a year or two and then left to sit for 5+ years?

I redirected an extremely relevant photography expired domain (not the lazy way, page to page and with an acquisition page). The redirection was on for one month and traffic has just been declining until now.

I doubt you did anything toxic or bad, though if there was a lot of page rank flowing in it can disrupt your rankings by causing bounces. But if all the links mainly went to a few pages total, it's not likely to cause a sitewide issue, just a page issue.

I have a second site, in the outdoor niche, that I built on an expired domain. I put something like 150+ articles on it (probably targeting keywords that are too difficult). Traffic was still slowly growing, until the last Google update. The site lost almost all its rankings. Back to zero or almost.

We've had endless discussions about this happening and they're happening all over the SEO-sphere, and Google's not responding. But lots of people were essentially deindexed for no apparent reason, with many having recovered all the lost rankings eventually. Many are still waiting in limbo. I don't think there's a cause on your side or a solution on your side. Just an issue with Google. I've theorized about what's going on but I don't want to re-litigate it. It just has to do with them trying to get a hold of this endless amount of AI content being thrown out there and there being civilian casualties and friendly fire happening.

I would actually love to merge the 2 sites, to create a much bigger outdoors section on the travel site. Together, it would have more than 1000 referring domains, which would be a decent amount of links. And of course, this way, I would cut costs and not spread myself thin, and focus on one site instead of 2. It would also be a good way to immediately double the amount of content on the first site. Do you think it's a good idea?

Sounds like a smart thing to do, in my opinion. I see zero point in working on two sites in the same niche if you don't have the means to go gung-ho at both and take spots #1 and #2. It's much better to laser focus your resources, especially in SEO where everything is compounding in nature.

The question is, which site should be merged into which one? The 9 year old site has existed without interruption, but it sounds like the 2nd expired domain may have the better link profile. Neither are performing well at the moment so maybe a better question is which has the brand you like better?

If you do this, you might as well salvage that photography domain you redirected and then removed. I'd use it too, to the right category or acquisition page. I used to do the acquisition page thing but at this point I've seen enough people doing other methods that I'd just aim it at the right category and then one-to-one anything else I can. Google doesn't seem to care. I've been paying attention to this for nearly a decade now without it changing much (other than not doing a lazy "everything to the homepage" redirect, which is bad as you know).

I could try to recover the site by following the Kitchen Sink Method. There are probably a lot of things that are not optimized properly on my site.

Sounds like you're a good candidate for it then. You're admitting you have room for improvement. It all helps and counts. But any site that's struggling and needs help in recovering, that method pretty much contains everything you need to do (for your typical content-based authority site. There's more for eCommerce and all that). Might as well squeeze out every little point in the algorithm you can. It'll pay back 10 fold later once you're rocking and rolling again.

I can consider that I am back to zero (or almost) so do you think I can just bombard it with new content, starting with golden ratio keywords and basically following the SEO Avalanche Technique? I did notice that I have 2-3 keywords that never failed me and are constantly #1 on Google even today after the "penalty", and I realized recently that they are golden ratio keywords.

I think this sounds reasonable solely because you told us that you've either targeted "not good" keywords or ones that are too competitive. You want to target good keywords in terms of volume that you can compete for, so you can actually start making some money and growing the power of your site. Later you can target the big keywords. You have to start at A and go through B, C, ... X, Y, and finally Z. There's no skipping around. I'm not saying you're doing this, but I see a LOT of magical thinking out there. In SEO, if you build it, they will not magically come. It's all got to be very strategic or you're burning away your money and flushing your time down the toilet.

 

[juju94]

Thanks a lot @Zoro and @Ryuzaki for your comments and insight, it is much appreciated.

9 year old site with 120 articles sounds to me like a great site to just freshen up and kickass

Indeed it would really be too bad to give it up!

Have you actively worked on the site or was it essentially built with passion in a year or two and then left to sit for 5+ years?

It was not THAT bad but for sure there was not enough consistency.

The question is, which site should be merged into which one? The 9 year old site has existed without interruption, but it sounds like the 2nd expired domain may have the better link profile. Neither are performing well at the moment so maybe a better question is which has the brand you like better?

If you do this, you might as well salvage that photography domain you redirected and then removed.

Yes it's true, after all both sites are doing badly now, I don't have much to lose. We never know if the link juice will end up having some positive effects. For the merging, I will redirect the newer expired domain to the original travel site. They both have a very similar DR (around 32) and the travel site has 400+ referring domains while the outdoors expired domain has 600+. So that's 1000+ RDs once combined, looks pretty good I guess.

I will do the general optimization as well and see what happens.

I think this sounds reasonable solely because you told us that you've either targeted "not good" keywords or ones that are too competitive. You want to target good keywords in terms of volume that you can compete for, so you can actually start making some money and growing the power of your site. Later you can target the big keywords.

Yes I think I haven't been very smart at choosing my keywords so far, either looking at what my (stronger) competitors are ranking for, or just using keyword difficulty scores, which don't really mean much in the end. And like I said my only successful keywords are small, golden ratio keywords that I targeted by accident. So I guess if I target a few dozens of them my traffic should increase.

I will implement all these and post updates on the forum, who knows if it can help someone one day!