Merging two business websites into one

To merge two business websites into one, pick one address to keep, build one site that holds the useful pages of both, and set the other address to forward every old page to its new home. Keep paying for the address you dropped for years, so nothing that points at it breaks. The hard decisions are which address wins and what to do with pages that overlap; the rest is careful bookkeeping.

Why owners end up with two sites

It happens more often than people think. You bought a competitor and got their website with them. You started a second line of work, say gutters alongside roofing, and a nephew made it its own site. A past designer built a "new" site on a new address and never shut the old one. Or two partners merged their practices.

Two sites cost two sets of fees, split your reviews and photos, and make customers wonder whether they are two companies. One site is easier to keep current and easier for customers to trust.

Which address to keep

The older address is not automatically the right one. Weigh these, roughly in this order:

Which one is on your trucks, signs, cards and invoices? Repainting is expensive. The address customers already see every day usually wins.
Which one runs your email? Moving mailboxes to a new domain means telling every customer and supplier your new address. If one domain carries all your email, keeping it saves real work.
Which one matches the business name going forward? If the merged business uses one name, its domain should match.
Which one is easier to say on the phone and spell? Short, no hyphens, no odd spelling.
Which one has more history? If one site has been around for many years with lots of pages and links from other sites, Google knows it better. That counts, but proper forwarding carries most of that history to the address you keep, so it rarely outweighs the first three.

If the two businesses will stay clearly separate brands, with different names and different customers, you may not want to merge at all. Two small sites are fine when customers really see two businesses.

Map every page of both sites

Before anything is built, make a list of every page on both sites. Look at the menus and footers, and if the sites have a sitemap, open it by adding /sitemap.xml to the address. Put the list in a spreadsheet with three columns: the old address, what the page is about, and where it will live on the merged site.

Most pages fall into one of these:

Unique to one site. The roofing site's "Metal roofs" page has no twin. It moves across as it is, with its text and photos.
Twins. Both sites have an about page, a contact page, a "Service area" page. Write one merged version that keeps the best parts of each, and point both old addresses at it.
Dead weight. A 2019 holiday special, a staff page for people who left. Point these at the closest useful page rather than deleting them into nothing.

Watch for pages that say almost the same thing in slightly different words. Two near-identical "Water heater repair" pages on one site make Google pick one and ignore the other, and make customers wonder which is current. Duplicate content on small business websites explains what counts.

Forwarding the address you drop

Forwarding, done properly, is a "permanent redirect": when someone opens an old page, the server tells their browser, and Google, that the page has moved for good, and sends them to the new address. It is often called a 301, after its code number.

Two things matter:

Forward page by page, not everything to the home page. Someone who clicked an old "Gutter guards" link should land on the gutter guards section of the merged site. Dumping everyone on the home page loses them, and Google treats it much like a missing page.
Keep the dropped domain registered. Old links, printed flyers, directory listings and customers' bookmarks keep using it for years. If it lapses, someone else can buy it, and they will get your old customers' clicks. A domain costs little per year; keep it on auto-renew.

If the address you drop has been verified in Google Search Console, the free tool where Google shows how it sees your site, it has a Change of Address tool for exactly this move. It tells Google directly that one site has moved into the other. Changing your domain without losing Google walks through it. Nobody can promise how Google will rank the merged site, but forwarding every page is how you keep the place both sites earned.

For the mechanics of pointing one domain at another, see domain forwarding.

Email, phones and listings

Email. If people still write to the dropped domain, keep those mailboxes or set them to forward to the new ones. Do not cancel the email plan on the old domain until you have watched it for a few months and nothing important arrives there.

Phones. Keep both numbers ringing. Show the main one on the merged site; customers who only know the other one will still reach you.

Google Business Profile. If the two businesses had separate physical locations, keep both profiles and point each one at its location's page on the merged site. If they were two listings for what is now one business at one address, update one to the merged name and website, and ask Google to close or merge the other rather than leaving a stale twin. Update Yelp, Facebook and any directory listings to the address you kept.

Writing the merged site

The merged home page should say plainly what the combined business does: "Roofing and gutters across Lake County". If one business took over the other, say so once, on the about page: "In 2026, Riverside Gutters joined Hale Roofing. Same crews, one phone number." Customers of the smaller business need to know they came to the right place.

Bring the reviews and testimonials of both. Show the photos of both. Put the two service lists into one menu organized by what customers need, not by which company used to do it.

What to do this week

Write down which address is on your trucks, signs and email, and choose the one to keep.
List every page of both sites in a spreadsheet with its new home.
Check both domains' renewal dates and set both to auto-renew.
Note where each email address on the dropped domain should end up.
Decide what the about page says about the merge.

If both sites already say the right things and you mostly need them in one place, you can see your site rebuilt first from what is already online and check the merged result before you switch either address.