So, you wanna merge different blogs into one. That can be harmful in term of traffic if you not plan your merging before doing it. There might be several reason to merge different blogs. Sometime it professional purpose, sometime business tie up or sometime just handling those blogs in better way.

I recently merge Piyada’s World(www.piyadas-world.com) with WorthyTips due to a business tie up. I know, I am going to loss so many things initially like backlink, search engine traffic but the fact is I am actually not going to lose anything except those blog-roll and my friends Rick weekly round up(whatsonmypc.wordpress.com) link juice. Now you may be wondering how you going to merge your blogs without effecting your search engine traffic.

Here I share some steps which able to reveal the secret.

Step 1: I am assuming all your blogs use same permalink structure, without that you will lose search engine traffic. Don’t worry there is a solution available for that but in that case all other blogs should have same permalink structure. First install Platinum SEO(download it) on that blog where you want to merge other blogs. Then check the 301 redirection option located on Platinum SEO configuration page. Now change the permalink structure to same as others.

Step 2: I think you already learn exporting and importing feature of Wordpress which located in Dashboard Tools option. The fact is exporting is easy but importing is not. By default Wordpress allow you importing maximum 2MB file and if you have more than that size then importing it will be a headache as you need to manual edit all those files in several part which size should be maximum 2MB. Unless your hosting company allow you, you can’t upload file maximum than 2MB. Why? Just read this instruction located on Wordpress help file. Now what to do? There is a plugin named ‘Advanced Export for WP & WPMU‘(download it) which allow you to download export file in multiple parts. To me monthly splitting work, you can choose other options.

Step 3: Now you need to import all those files in that blog where you want to merge others. Just create a new user(ex.-tempuser) and choose that user name when you asked to choose author name(map existing users) during importing. That will make your editing work little bit easy if you need to edit category, tags or anything else. Just browse only that author post will make your editing fast. Don’t start editing now.

Step 4: As all merged articles are now live, you need to transfer your others blogs visitors in your merged blog now. For that we will use a 301 redirection. Here is a code which you should use on your others blog .htaccess files located on blog directory:

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

Please REPLACE www.newdomain.com in the above code with your actual domain name.

Step 5: You need to inform your changes now to search engines. Till now Google only allow you to notify your changes. Thanks to Google Webmaster Tools which is free to use. You must have all your domain in same account and all your site should be verified. Just open the dashboard of that domain which you want to merge. Click on ‘Site Configuration‘ under which you will see an option ‘Change of address‘(remember this option only work for root level domains only). Under this you will find a drop down menu of verified domain, just choose that domain where you want to merge that dashboard domain. If you don’t use ‘www’ prefix in your domain then you should change your permalink and add a ‘www’ as prefix and verify that domain too using Google Webmaster Tools. Then inform change of address again with www.yourdomain.com. You should do ‘www’ prefix changes before Step 4.

Step 6: Invest your time to edit all imported topics. Just browse only that newly created author’s articles. Wordpress quick editing feature will help you to complete your work fast here. If you show category name on your permalink then you don’t need to edit anything and you should not create another user; just accept creating new authors when asked by Wordpress importing feature during importing.

If you think I forget any steps then please inform me via comment.