Giving New Site the URL of an Active Older Site

Avatar
  • Answered
I currently have two sites.

1. Website A. My old site (I'll call it http://www.bigtree.com), which I would like to keep published online, even if it is dormant.

2. Website B. My newer mobile-ready site (I'll call it http://www.treesprout.com) which employs responsive design.

I'd like to replace Website B's URL with that of Website A, but keep all of the content from Website A intact, and prevent data/pages from being lost. I'd like to give Website A a NEW URL root name, if that's the solution.

My reasoning for wanting Website A's URL to be Website B's URL: I currently use a permanent redirect on Website A so that viewers immediately go to Website B. I've done this so far until I figure out how to give Website B the URL of Website A without losing Website A's content and structure. But pages of Website A are still SEO'd in Google with the redirect. I think Google is confused as to how to rank my page(s) since there's a redirect. My ranking has gone down a tad bit for the URL and keywords I use for both sites.

How do I go about resolving this? I hope this all makes sense.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks so much, in advance!
Avatar
johnpaulb-imhs1
Hello ytlee, Thank you for your question about changing site URL's. It is very difficult to say how Google will handle, or rank redirects. But, this may look like a brand new site to them, since the content is changing. Essentially just change your site name with SquareSpace to websiteA, and point the DNS to Squarespace. Then, setup 301 redirects for any pages that do not exist in websiteA. This also means you will have to change the domain name for DomainA to something else, since only one instance of the domain can resolve. If you have any further questions, feel free to post them below. Thank you, John-Paul