At Crucial Stage of Site Development - Need Help

[BLazeD]

I have 2 sites - lets call them SiteA and SiteB.

SiteA covers topic X
SiteB covers topics X, Y and Z

SiteA is very well ranked in search engines for term "X" (top 5 for all variants), has a decent PR and backlinks, and gets nice traffic. It is about 3.5 months old.

Site B is much more new, is OK ranked in search engines for terms "X", "Y" and "Z" (top 20-40), has no PR yet, has good backlinks (none of which actually show up for link:www.SiteB.com yet) and gets about quarter of the traffic of SiteB. It is about 1 month old

My Dilemma

Both are basically news sites for the above topics (X, Y and Z). I am adding in forums soon. However SiteB clearly has the most potential. It covers more topics and has a better layout. It covers everything SiteA does and more.

I make the exact same news post regarding topic X on both sites (just copy and paste) and they even use the same CMS (although SiteB has a far superior graphical design).

What should I do? These are my options as I see it:

- Continue to develop both sites seperately, and maybe 301 redirect SiteA to SiteB at some point down the road?

- 301 Redirect SiteA to SiteB now. This way all of the traffic would instantly be transferred to SiteB (and so would the PR and the SERPs?)

Please let me know what you think, and if you need more details.

I am particularly interested in SERPs at this stage, as this is where most traffic comes from.

Cheers, Matt.

[myblueshoes]

I can hardly claim to be an expert, but based on your description, this is what I would do- work to gradually put them into one.

probably put a coming soon.....(with date) blowout message/link on your site A (with enhancements, descriptions, etc. telling all about the goodies to come in site B without necessarily mentioning it's a new site), and then try to morf the two in the backround, taking the best of both, ensuring some consistency in the look and feel from A to B and retaining most of Forum A's topics, etc. and then make good on your word and on that date, bring the two to one- just keeping the B URL to forward/redirect to A URL (not the otherway around since more A people may have bookmarked...) B URL site: tell them that "were changing our name to "site A" on October 1st 2004....please BookMark US NOW!!! .)"

I think you'll increase loyalty (and visits) on both ends. But I think even more importantly, your time in managing both sites and forums is valuable, and with the time you free up, you'll find other creative ways to make money.

All the best,
LT

[mccollin]

Which domain is more valuable? I have dealt with the same thing and have been taking it slowly over the last year. I ended up making one domain primarily the forum, and the other domain the home page and store. Eventually I want the second domain to be all... but I'm too chicken to kill my linkpop.... :(