Please appraise an idiots web mess..lol

[Brett]

I have a couple of sites promoting my business. I do not think I have gone about it the right way though..lol

I started out with one site on a domain. Then I created a much nicer site on another similar domain. The second site doesnt seem to be performing as well as the old one so I am frightened to get rid of the old one despite it lokking like a dogs breakfast..lol

ok

The first site I developed is:
www.learn2ride.net.au

This is the site that I have most links pointing to.

he newer site is

www.learntoridemackay.com.au

recently incorporated the new site into the old all coming under the www.learn2ride.net.au domain. There are several links on the main page to the new site as well as a navigation bar button titled "NEW HOME"

http://learn2ride.net.au/home_page_learntoridemackay.html

I dont do all that bad in google but I need to get into the top 3 for a particular search criteria.

I know there are a couple of silly spelling errors and the like, sorting them out as I go.

Any advice as to how I can improve stuff will be appreciated.

 

[DavidL]

well the older site has a better backlink profile:

http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/www.learn2ride.net.au/www.learntoridemackay.com.au/a!comparison

so that's why it's doing better. the new one only has links from the old site.

however i would agree that it's worth making the switch - the new domain is much better I would say. however it's not as good as mackaymotorcycletraining.com.au which i guess is your main competition?

My advice would be to focus on and offpage SEO on the second site. Leave the first one up and pointing to the new one. Make sure content on the new site is very different from the first site and include plenty of instances of your target search terms in the copy.

Read Seomoz.org for SEO tips & best practices

 

[FirstPageResults]

-Much prefer the white background shown here, from whats on the other domain here

-You have duplicate content on both domains (seen above). That needs to be sorted out as a matter of priority.. probably the major factor holding back the new .com.au site. Easiest way to solve this would be to change the link on the homepage of the old site to point to the new domain and 301 redirect all of the duplicate pages on old site that mirror the new site - then keep the old site running as it was originally (think that makes sense).

 

[Brett]

The .com.au site has been up and running for a few months but I have created very few links to it aside from dropping it on facebook and similar. I have only in the last 2 or 3 weeks dropped it into the .net.au domain to run off the back of it.
I could just take the duplicate pages out or is there an advantage to doing what you suggested. with the 301 linky things off each page?

BTW thanks for the help.

 

[FirstPageResults]

The advantage is that those pages are are already indexed and ranking in google over the new site (by the sounds of it). 301 redirecting will tell GoogleBot those pages have perminately moved to the new address... and any authority those pages have will be passed on.

You don't have to do it, but it can't hurt

 

[Brett]

So , to confirm. Any sites I have that are duplicated I should place a redirect for each page to display the corresponding page withing the preferred site.

Do I leave the old content where it is?

 

[FirstPageResults]

Remove and unlink the pages from the old site where you duplicated the new site. Then redirect those links to the new site in htaccess file:

http://jesperastrom.com/seo/how-to-do-a-htaccess-301-redirect/

so this page should be removed:
http://www.learn2ride.net.au/courses_beginner_qride_advanced_3.html

and redirected to:
http://www.learntoridemackay.com.au/qridemackay_learn2ride_qride.html

I say this because it looks like you have the new site running on both domains. Although on further inspection, it appears the content on the old site and new site are fairly similair - is that right? You should look at rewriting the content on the new site IMO.