1 minute readReference note
When should overlapping reputation assets be consolidated?
In brief
Consolidate assets when one maintained destination can preserve useful content and resolve overlapping or conflicting purposes. Similar topics alone are not enough reason to merge.
Review each resource’s audience, facts, links, traffic, and distinct information to establish what would be lost or improved. Two pages can share a subject while answering different decisions. Differently titled pages can also repeat the same obsolete claim.
The editorial plan identifies information retained, the preferred current account, and the owner responsible for updates. The technical plan maps old URLs to relevant destinations and updates internal links. A homepage redirect can discard the context people were trying to find.
The result should be easier to understand and maintain, not merely smaller. Canonicalization helps with substantially similar URLs; distinct resources can remain useful when their relationship and scope are clear.