Should I Merge My Blogspot Blogs - The Conclusion

I wrote an article earlier this year asking other bloggers their opinion on whether I should merge my two blogger blogs or not.

Those of you who didn’t read it can read it first by following these links: Should I Merge My Blogs (part 1) and Should I Merge My Blogs (Part 2)

I have to be honest and say I was a little disappointed in the input and feed back I received and eventually made the decision to merge the blogs anyway and learn from my own experiences.

Here is my conclusion for any one else with the same dilemma and who like me is looking for some answers before doing any long term damage to their blogs.

My reasons for merging my blogs were:

1. I didn’t think I would have time to post an article on both blogs every week which would mean one blog would always be lacking content.

2. The Blog that I didn’t update on a regular basis was losing traffic and slipping down in the search engines because it wasn’t kept fresh.

3. There were 50 articles on this blog and 62 articles on my sales training blog so my thought was that I would create 1 large blog with 112 articles on it.

4. I also thought that the traffic I was getting to both blogs would also merge and create a larger high traffic blog that would in turn get a better Google page rank.

My experience was quite the opposite.

My other blog “Simple Sales and Marketing Solutions” is a sales training blog and geared predominantly towards the Timeshare Industry and Timeshare Sales Professionals where I have spent the last twenty odd years of my working life.

This blog “In Between the Tapas and Tantrums” apart from being my personal blog is all about my passion in life. A light hearted mixture of short stories about my own personal experiences of raising my twin daughters on the Costa del Sol mixed with travel tips, hotel reviews and general advice about living in Spain or visiting this beautiful place called Mijas Costa.

What I found when I merged the two blogs together was that my old followers to this blog couldn’t find my articles any more as they didn’t come up on the first pages of Google searches any more and the traffic to my sales training blog hadn’t improved one bit.

I had in effect achieved the complete opposite of what I was trying to achieve and actually lost traffic and readers. I now realise this was because my blogs were targeted towards two very different audiences.

It also made me go back and read an article I had written myself quite a while ago reminding me about my personal reasons for blogging: “Are You Blogging for Fun or Profit?” (Also worth a read if you’re thinking of reasons for and against merging your blogs)

My conclusion is this:

If you have two or more blogs about similar subjects or subjects that will cross over and complement each other and they are being read by the same type of people who find them through similar key phrases or search terms then it is better to merge them and double the traffic to one big blog. But if your blogs are reaching different audiences like mine are and cover different subjects that don’t cross over or complement each other then without a doubt, keep them separate.

What do you think?

Have you merged your blogs only to unmerge them again at a later date, or did you find it worked for you?