A dilemma: Keep the site or toss it?

8 replies
Hi Warriors,

I'm trying to make a decision about one of my sites and need a bit of input, if you don't mind.

Back in 1998, I launched a generic site that ended up being in the anxiety niche. Since then, it's gained a PR2 rank and is getting about 8,000 visits per month. This is the site that made me sales, until I lost the blog portion during a site move last fall. So at this point, I cannot use sales as a deciding factor.

About 2 years ago, I was going to dump the first site and created one with 'anxiety' in the domain name. That one is only getting about 3,000 visits per month. Currently, it has far less content than what I had on the first site before the blog issue. This second site has a PR1.

Obviously, the first site will have more back links simply because it's so old and I did list it in around 500 directories back then. The new site has not had such attention, but I do think it has great potential, especially since the domain name is more keyword targeted.

Here's my dilemma.

Both sites will require work to add content, boost traffic and sales.

So the question is:

Do I continue with both anxiety sites and rebuild the blog that was on the first one? Or do I drop the older site and keep the keyword-targeted one?

I'm leaning towards the latter, but when I compare the traffic, I'm reluctant to dump the older one.

What would you do?

Thanks,

Sylvia
#dilemma #site #toss
  • Profile picture of the author HowieM
    If you can afford it, I would keep both.
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  • Profile picture of the author Scott Burton
    My gut says, hang onto them both (or give one to me ). If they are in a related niche, are they hosted the same place?

    You could use what you develop for one site to make some great research for material on the other site. Maybe one site is ahead right now, but as they both age, the younger site will gain traction. But if you can harness the traffic that already exists for the older site, it would be crazy to let it go.

    Depending on what you have going in either of those sites, I would expect you could still build some income off of 5000+ visits per month. Any idea about how many unique visitors?
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    • Profile picture of the author sylviad
      Originally Posted by Scott Burton View Post

      My gut says, hang onto them both (or give one to me ). If they are in a related niche, are they hosted the same place?

      You could use what you develop for one site to make some great research for material on the other site. Maybe one site is ahead right now, but as they both age, the younger site will gain traction. But if you can harness the traffic that already exists for the older site, it would be crazy to let it go.

      Depending on what you have going in either of those sites, I would expect you could still build some income off of 5000+ visits per month. Any idea about how many unique visitors?
      They are both in the anxiety niche and hosted in the same place, but I see there would be an advantage if one were hosted elsewhere. Actually, one was until I discovered I could register it in the U.S. That's when I also moved it to my less expensive host - and lost the blog in the process.

      As far as I can tell, those are unique visits.

      My plan WAS to get the second site to overtake the first so I could drop the first which is a generic domain name. The second is keyword specific so I consider it superior.

      If I keep the first site, it will need a major overhaul. I built it on static pages and I recently discovered are suffering from some HTML and link issues. It could be better designed, that's for sure, and a blog would make that easy. The second one is a blog, which might explain how it progressed so quickly in comparison to the first site.

      Sylvia
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      • Profile picture of the author Bill Farnham
        Sylvia,

        Those aged backlinks from the directories are priceless. If you sell the site and someone with the drive to make that site fly buys it you'll be kicking yourself for selling it.

        You need to concentrate on the old site if you can, or at least price it to reflect the aged backlinks if you sell it.

        Personally, I'd keep it and make it a better site. I say that because one of my 10+ year old domains sat dormant for a while as just a parked page, but when I re-energized it I couldn't believe how fast and high up in the serps that site went even with completely different content on it.

        ~Bill
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  • Profile picture of the author royljestr
    For the small expense of keeping them I would certainly say to keep them both. You can redirect one to the other if you really want to. You could always throw an autoblog up and make money off of ads or something.
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  • Profile picture of the author mikeroosa
    Keep them both or sell one of them on Flippa.
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  • Profile picture of the author Dan C. Rinnert
    Originally Posted by sylviad View Post

    This is the site that made me sales, until I lost the blog portion during a site move last fall.
    Did you check the Wayback Machine to see if you could recover any of the old blog posts?
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    • Profile picture of the author sylviad
      Originally Posted by Bill Farnham View Post

      Sylvia,

      Those aged backlinks from the directories are priceless. If you sell the site and someone with the drive to make that site fly buys it you'll be kicking yourself for selling it.

      You need to concentrate on the old site if you can, or at least price it to reflect the aged backlinks if you sell it.

      Personally, I'd keep it and make it a better site. I say that because one of my 10+ year old domains sat dormant for a while as just a parked page, but when I re-energized it I couldn't believe how fast and high up in the serps that site went even with completely different content on it.

      ~Bill
      Hm. Good point, Bill. I hadn't thought of that. I should go and see how many of them are even valid today. Last time I checked backlinks for that site, it shows over 1000, but I didn't look where they were.

      I suppose I could change it's focus, which could be an option since I don't really want to keep coming up with more anxiety content for 2 sites. One is enough.

      Originally Posted by Dan C. Rinnert View Post

      Did you check the Wayback Machine to see if you could recover any of the old blog posts?
      Thanks Dan, but I went through a series of suggestions from Warriors at the time and getting the blog back proved impossible. It was gone. My host didn't have THAT blog but it did have 2 others, so I don't know where this one went. They said it was never there. So where? {shrug}

      Sylvia
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