Today, we’ll discuss author websites, search engine optimization, how Google works, and more.
Jim and I recently recorded an episode about pruning and focus. In that episode, Jim announced that he was stepping down from actively co-hosting the podcast, and we both talked about how we were doing too many things, and we were trying to focus. The Chinese proverb that echoes through my mind is, “The man who chases two rabbits catches neither one.”
In my efforts to prune, one of my goals was to reduce the number of websites I maintain. Owning a website is a lot like owning a pet. It’s a lot of fun but requires upkeep, maintenance, and attention. It is possible to have too many pets, and it is possible to have too many websites. The more websites you have, the more confusing it is for people trying to find you. While it’s tempting to set up a website for every book or series you have, that can get you into trouble in the long run, as I have learned the hard way.
I used to have five websites. I now have four.
AuthorMedia.com and NovelMarketing.com do basically the same thing for the same audience, so I’ve decided to combine them into one website.
In this episode, I’ll share that process and give you tips on how to do it without harming your Google search rankings.
You may encounter this situation if you launched a website for a book or series a few years ago, but now that book no longer needs its own site. Or perhaps your publisher created a website for your book, but after several years, they’ve decided to shut it down and will no longer cover the costs to keep it active.
Merging websites is a common challenge for authors.
The Wrong Way to Combine Websites
Most people do it the wrong way because they don’t know any other way. They simply delete the old website and maybe copy some of the pages to the new one. That’s a huge mistake.
When you delete an old website, everyone who visits it now gets a 404 error, which is a page that says, “this page cannot be found.” Everyone who has bookmarked that website can no longer find you.
Search engines that go to that website get the 404 error as well, and you lose all the credibility, rankings, and SEO value you have built with Google. But you don’t have to lose your search engine reputation when you delete a website. In fact, you can maintain those rankings.
The Right Way to Combine Websites
Your primary tool for combining, moving, or merging websites is something called a 301 redirect. Two main types of redirects are used on websites: 301 redirects and 302 redirects.
A 302 redirect is temporary. It’s used when you want a page to point to another page for a short period, directing visitors to a new location without making a permanent change. In most cases, authors rarely use 302 redirects.
A 301 redirect, on the other hand, is a permanent redirect. When a human visitor lands on a page with a 301 redirect, they are automatically taken to a new webpage. For example, they would be directed to AuthorMedia.com/NovelMarketing, which serves as the homepage for Novel Marketing within the Author Media website.
When a search engine like Google or Bing encounters a 301 redirect, it understands that the original page has been permanently moved. The search engine then updates its index, replacing the old page with the new one. Google handles this process efficiently, often updating its records within days. The old pages disappear, and the new ones take their place.
This is one of the fastest ways to remove an old website while preserving its value. The best part? Google rewards webmasters for using 301 redirects because they help keep the internet free of frustrating 404 errors. Broken links are bad for search engines and users, making 301 redirects an essential tool for maintaining a smooth and user-friendly web experience.
Let’s say you had a website dedicated to your book, and the URL was YourBookTitle.com. If you wanted to combine that with your main website, you’d set up a redirect where YourBookTitle.com points to YourName.com/books/yourbooktitle or the URL you choose to use for that page dedicated to your book.
You can have multiple 301 redirects pointing to the same page.
For example, if you had a website with five pages about your book, you can combine those pages into one on your new website by using a 301 redirect for each page. That strategy puts all your eggs in that one-page basket. That single new page might rank better than the five separate pages ranked on your old site. Everyone who visits one of those old pages through an email link or printed bookmark will be redirected to your new website.
Many web hosts, including Namecheap.com, will let you do this for free on the web host dashboard. Hover and Cloudflare have also offered it for free in the past. As long as you own the domain, the redirects will work. I recommend you keep ownership of any domain you have actively used. If you let the domain lapse, someone else may buy it and gain your credibility. It would also be confusing for web visitors. Even worse, someone completely incompatible with your brand could take over the domain and use it to damage your reputation.
It would be like having a popular phone number be hijacked by a competitor. For example, maybe a popular local pizza place has a memorable phone number in all its jingles, and everyone has it memorized. If they let that number expire, a competing pizza company could snatch it up. Suddenly, customers trying to reach the original pizza place end up calling the competitor instead. It leaves the customers confused, and the rival gets the business.
Maintain Ownership of Your Domain
Make sure to keep your domains registered and ensure that the email address linked to your domain registrar is one you’ll use for the long term. A common mistake authors make is tying their domain registration to an email address from their internet service provider, like Comcast or AT&T. If they switch providers when they move to a new town where their old provider isn’t available, that email address stops working. As a result, they never receive renewal notices and warnings that their domain is about to expire. Sometimes, these critical emails end up in an old Yahoo spam account they never check. Without realizing it, their domain expires, and someone else buys it.
I’ve seen multiple authors forget to renew their AuthorName.com domain, and the most common outcome is that someone else buys it and holds it for ransom. One friend let her domain expire, and when she tried to get it back, the new owner refused to sell it for anything less than $500. Instead of paying just $10 a year to keep it, she had to spend $500 to reclaim what was originally hers, all because she forgot to renew it.
To avoid this, keep your domain active and simply point it to your new website. Once you learn how to do this, it becomes a powerful tool. In the future, you can direct new projects to that same domain, maintaining consistency and control over your online presence.
I don’t recommend creating a separate website for your book. Instead, buy the domain name that matches your book title and redirect it to a dedicated page on your main website. For example, if you visit CourtshipInCrisis.com, it will redirect you to the Courtship in Crisis page on my website, which is https://www.thomasumstattd.com/books/courtship-in-crisis/. On that page, I’ve set up a MyBookTable page with purchase links, Goodreads reviews, and all the essential details, like bulk ordering options and more, so readers can easily find everything in one place.
In summary, once you take down the old site, the 301 redirect points old URLs to their equivalent on your new website. You may need to merge some pages since you don’t need two “about” pages. When you create the redirects, it’s also good to update your about page, as it tends to get out of date quickly.
WordPress makes it easy to move pages from one website to another. While there are plugins to help with this, the functionality is built right into WordPress itself. In your WordPress dashboard, go to the Tools menu in the sidebar, where you’ll find options for Import and Export. Simply export the content from your old site and import it into the new one. This allows you to transfer all your blog posts and comments quickly and efficiently.
Unlike some platforms, WordPress doesn’t lock you in. You can export your content and import it into any competing platform that supports WordPress’s import/export functionality, and most do support it since WordPress is so widely used.
The import and export tool is also useful for importing and exporting between WordPress sites, including those using the Divi theme, which I use on most of my websites. Divi is a visually appealing, drag-and-drop WordPress theme that offers the simplicity of Squarespace or Wix while maintaining the power and flexibility of WordPress.
Divi has its own built-in import/export feature, making it incredibly easy to move pages. For example, I exported the homepage of NovelMarketing.com in just two minutes. Every Divi page includes an import/export button, allowing you to transfer graphics, styles, and layouts exactly as they were, with only the menu updating to match the new site.
I recommend using Divi by Elegant Themes (Affiliate Link) on your WordPress website.
A Website Within a Website
You can also create a website within a website. It’s essentially a second homepage inside your existing site. This is what we did with AuthorMedia.com. There’s a Novel Marketing section within the Author Media website, and the Novel Marketing page functions much like a homepage.
Eventually, when you visit NovelMarketing.com, everything will work just as it always has, and users may not even realize they’re on a new site. One major advantage of this approach is that instead of splitting your “Google points” between two separate buckets, all the ranking “points” are consolidated into a single bucket, which strengthens your overall search engine presence.
The more people link to your website, the higher it ranks in search results. If those links point to a webpage that is then redirected using a 301 redirect, nearly all the authority from those links transfers to the new page. This is especially beneficial when following the approach I recommend.
The purpose of 301 redirects is to help Google seamlessly pass authority to the new page rather than leading visitors to a dead-end 404 error. Google favors this because it maintains a smooth user experience while preserving your content’s credibility and ranking power.
Final Tips
Don’t be too quick to shut down your old website. Keeping both sites live for a few days is a good idea to ensure everything has transferred over correctly. You might also want to check that the Wayback Machine has a snapshot of your old site, partly for posterity, since it keeps a historical record of the internet, but also as a backup. If you later realize you forgot to move a page, you can retrieve it from the Wayback Machine and copy it.
You can find the Wayback Machine at Archive.org. If you want a trip down memory lane, I highly recommend looking up Yahoo.com from 1996. It’s a fascinating reminder of how much the internet has changed over the years.
When merging websites, make sure to turn your 404 errors into 301 redirects. That might not have made sense at the beginning of this discussion, but now you understand its importance. Doing this will preserve your SEO value, attract more traffic, rank higher, and potentially sell more books
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