How to merge two or more wordpress sites from separete domains into one without impacting SEO

Monday, 23rd October 2017

merge-multiple-wordpres-websites-howto-merge-two-or-more-websites-together-without-loosing-seo-credability

If you run multiple WordPress websites or blogs, but one of the websites is much more developed at a certain point you might decide that the best of the two worlds would be two merge two WordPress blogs into one.
 

So how can we do merge your multiple wordpress websites into single ?


1. Export content from each of the old websites you will be closing soon

First thing to do is to immediately create SQL data and WordPress sites backup, so if something goes wrong you can easily restore.

 


Next From wordpress admin area wp-admin

export-content-wordpress-website-screenshot-howto

Visit

Tools -> Export

Make sure, the All Content option is selected like shown in above screenshot and click on

Download Export File button

The downloaded files will have a copy of all yours

– Posts and pages
– Custom Post Types
– All included categories and tags

Once we have transferred the file to the Website with which we're going to merge old WP content, we need to install the Import plugin

install-wordpress-importer-to-merge-multiple-wordpress-sites

To do so navigate to:

Tools -> Import -> (Intall now)

wordpress-merge-two-or-more-websites-run-importer-screenshot.

Tools -> Run Importer

You will be asked for the file you just dumped into the second wordpress install which you'll be merging

export-and-import-wp-file-screenshot

Wordpress will start importing, your Export file and analyze it, then you will be redirected to

Import Settings Page
 

wordpress-import-settings-page-screenshot-howto-merge-sites

Assign Authors (that should be your account or the account with which the primary blog has most posts and with which you'll be merging).

Hopefully all will be fine with import and you will get the success page:

wordpress-success-page-importing-two-websites

One last step is to set properly redirects so that the transition merge from the Old Website to the New one does not impact your website Search Engine Optimization Ratings.

The redirects are made via .htaccess file it will be located in the Document Root (Or main directory) of your wordpress installed websites for example if your website is located under /var/www/wordpress-site your .htaccess file will be located under /var/www/wordpress-site/.htaccess

Open the file (SITUATED ON THE OLD WORDPRESS WEBSITE THAT YOU'LL BE MERGING) with editor directly on the server or if it is a shared hosting, download it and edit it at your side.

To the beginning of it add the following Apache ModRewrite code:
 

#Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.newsite.com/$1 [R=301,L]


Replace inside above example http://www.newsite.com with the name of the primary domain name to which we're merging (e.g. the merging domain and not the one we merge).

If you experience some problems with pictures or you like to Merge Bulk Edit categories  and tags  read import external images to wordpress as well as how to merge bulk edit categories in tags in WordPress

 

Share this on:

Download PDFDownload PDF

Tags: , , , , , ,

Leave a Reply

CommentLuv badge