Two reasons.
1. You're not fooling anyone with your blog on a different domain. You may be able to take advantage of something in the algo which sees it as a completely unique domain, and you also may not. Either way, I don't think it's the advantage you think it is.
2. Consolidating everything to one website helps your brand. Spreading out your content isn't in the interest of your clients, and doesn't help make your business as "thick" as I think they need to be online these days.
hth
Excellent points, except we are "fooling" tons of people. Our company isn't the most loved in our industry because the small mom & pops can't/won't compete and they're very vocal. We get tons of people sharing our stuff on Facebook/Twitter/etc who will also be the same people who say "That company is evil!". Good points to consider though, thank you.
but then I can't immediately think of an advantage to having them on different domains competing with each other for SERP position for the same brand.
That's the thing, the ecomm site sells cogs, the blog talks about cog news, how best to use a cog to start a fire/repel zombies, ways to turn a cog into a toy for kids, etc. The ecomm site is set up great from an SEO perspective, but it's all specific products and just product descriptions. The blog has the super longtail keywords that people are searching for randomly and as they're reading, the links in the posts go to the ecomm site. So while the ecomm site may rank #1 for "cogs" and the blog isn't in the top 100, the blog may rank #1 for "why you should own a blue cog" which drives back to the ecomm site.
If your blog isn't getting many links, then what's the point in it? Clearly no one's reading it, or it's not engaging with anyone.
Another, it's confusing to users for the domain to change as they browse a site. The only possible downside IMO is that if you have posts/pages on each domain that target the same keywords, you could potentially lose some double listings.
As earlier suggested, just 301 every blog post to its new location on the new domain. I'm not sure why an SEO company would need to explain it in much more detail, it's a pretty obvious thing to me that should have been done from the beginning. Using multiple domains for one company each with their own site is retarded for your brand image, unless they're separate marketing campaigns, so e.g. Ferrari create a micro site for a new car they've launched.
Links do not equal readership or engagement. We're consistently getting a few million uniques per month on the blog, at least 50 comments per post, a metric shit-ton of social interaction, and hundreds of email subscribers per week.
Do you really think people get confused when the URL changes? I know when I look at a service in BST and click to buy I don't think "WHOA WTF JUST HAPPENED!?" when the domain changes, but will admit I'm an "advanced internet user" (ha).
I'd agree, it should have been done from the beginning, but we're not at the beginning, we're 6 years into a blog with at least 3 posts per day. And we keep the branding as consistent as possible across both sites, so if the ecomm is CogWorks, the blog is CogNews by CogWorks.
I guess I'm not completely understanding why it's beneficial to shut down a high authority site in an obviously related niche that can provide tons of backlinks (yes, I understand the diminishing returns since they're all from the same domain) to the money site. Wouldn't two high authority sites be better than one?
