How You Can Merge WordPress Websites without Sacrificing SEO
If you have multiple WordPress websites, it is common to want to merge them together. The best thing is that WordPress has built-in tools that will make the merge easy. In this post, we shall be discussing the steps you should take when merging websites together on WordPress.
Why merge two websites?
There are many reasons why people choose to merge their websites into one. One of the top reasons is the need to start a new WordPress blog by combining all your other old blogs. This gets all your content on one website. Other people merge websites when one of their blogs is not doing well. They merge it to the primary blog. With most people, the decision to merge multiple WordPress websites comes when they want to save time maintaining their website. Having one website will save you time in maintenance.
Export the content from your old website
The first step is to back up your target websites then export the old content. To do this from the WordPress admin area, head to Tools>>Export page. Select ‘All Content’ before clicking the ‘Download Export File’. An XML file will be prepared then it will be sent to your browser. Save the file to your computer. The file will contain your old WordPress posts and pages, custom post types and categories, tags and custom taxonomies.
Merging the website
Once the export is complete, it is time to merge the old website to your new one. To do this, you need to go to the admin area of your new website and head to Tools>>Import page. You will see all the import tools that are available. Scroll to the bottom and click ‘Install now’ under the WordPress tool. Once the WordPress importer is installed click on ‘Run Importer’.
The next step is to upload the WordPress file that you downloaded from the old website. Choose the XML file on your computer and click ‘Upload file and Import’. WordPress will upload the file then analyze it. You will then be redirected to the import settings page.
From the settings page, you will be asked to assign authors or to create new authors. Click on ‘Import Attachments’ option for the import media attachments from your old website. Once that is done, hit the ‘Submit’ button for the last step. The content will be imported and added to your website. a success message will be shown once everything is done.
Setup redirects
Once you merge your websites, the next step should be setting up the redirects. Users from your old website should be able to get to your new website easily. To do this you need to edit the .htaccess file on your old website. You can do this by connecting to your old WordPress website through FTP client or the File Manager tool from the WordPress hosting cPanel.
Replace this file on the .htaccess file
#Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ put linke here [R=301,L]
The link used above is the domain name of your new website. Save the changes and upload the edited file. You are done merging your multiple WordPress websites.