Combining multiple articles/blog posts into one is not an unusual thing. People are more drawn to longer articles, as opposed to shorter ones since they appear as if they hold more information. This is especially the case with more serious and technical articles in which people are looking to find lots of details. For this reason,a lot of content creators decide on combining multiple into one very often.
Anyone can put two pieces of text together, but not anyone can merge two pieces of text and make it seem as if they were always one entity. That is why this article will cover how to do it, and what you might gain from doing it.
Having longer content, with more substance, will likely lead to better-performing articles since now they will be ranking for a bigger number of keywords. The articles before the merger could have been quality content on their own, but they just weren’t long enough, captivating enough or just not doing well in the aspect of ranking. This is a good sign that you should consider combining your content.
When should you start combining articles
Maybe you have some articles that were posted a long time ago, but they are about a currently trending topic, or there are articles buried under a pile of newer ones and you think they might be of interest to people visiting your site.
If you have a number of articles covering the same topic, combining them could create the ultimate article for that topic, offering different opinions and perspectives on the same subject.
The process of combining articles
- Decide which blog post/URL will be the main one. To that one, you will be linking and redirecting from now on (Later in this article, we will go deeper into the process and importance or redirecting).
- Put all the content in one place, not on the blog yet, but into a text editor. Here you will analyze the content, add or remove bits and pieces of text.
- Create one intro, one conclusion, and appropriate transitions. The reader shouldn’t be able to tell that this article was once two separate ones.
Handle your redirections in order to preserve your SEO
Merging already published content will almost always leave you with broken links, internally and externally. This is very bad for the user experience and the SEO of your website. All the traffic that was previously going to the separate articles now has to be redirected to the merged one. Not by any chance do you want your visitors to end up stranded on a 404 page. By setting up proper redirect rules, you will transfer all the SEO power that the articles had individually to the one they make upnow.
Redirections can be done manually, by changing the HTML code. You should consider doing this only if you possess the right knowledge and amount of experience because the process can sometimes be confusing and time-consuming.
The other option you have is to use a redirect plugin. Some people avoid using them out of fear that the plugin might slow down their site, or they haven’t had previous experience in using redirect plugins. A plugin that is extremely easy to use and certainly won’t slow down your site is WP 301 Redirects. Since it doesn’t load any extra CSS or JS files you don’t have to worry about a reduction in your site’s performance or about a conflict with the themes and plugins you have installed on your site already.
Once the WP 301 Redirects plugin is activated it will monitor all changes on your posts and pages and will automatically set up a redirect rule for them, no action is required from you to stop traffic from going to the 404 pages.
With this plugin, your site will not only be free from broken links but from bad bots as well. The only bots that will be allowed are Google’s ones.
To have all the traffic that is going through your website on display, you can use WP 301 Redirects’ information charts. In case you have any questions or are in need of assistance, dedicated support comes as a part of this plugin.
Final step
If you see that as something necessary, you can migrate comments from the individual articles migrated to the new one, so you don’t lose the feedback you received on the articles previously to them merging.
Once you have formed the new article, set up all the required redirects, migrated your comments, the last thing you need to do is to delete the individual articles, so your site doesn’t have any duplicated content. After this, your work is done.
Conclusion
Combining multiple articles into one should result in apage with content that covers the topic better than the two separate pages did on their own. The article will have more relevance both internally and externally since more parts of the site and more backlinks will be pointing to it. When combining multiple articles, do it properly, otherwise, you risk confusing the reader and leaving them wondering what the objective of the article was.
Although having two different perspectives will create an article with more depth, it is crucial that the article has a central primary topic. The reader should have an idea of what the article is about just by briefly going through it, not by rereading and analyzing it. When merging your articles, make it harmonious, your redirecting immaculate, and you should see the benefits of combining articles in no time.
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