I had surgery a couple of weeks ago and recovery has taken longer than expected. On top of that, Margaret my pregnant wife, Mercy our one-year-old, and I all came down with colds. So this is going to be a shorter episode.  Back in episode 204, we talked about pruning and focus. If you remember that is the episode where Jim announced that he is stepping down from co-hosting the podcast. One of the things I am doing to help bring focus to my life is reducing the number of websites I maintain.  Owning a website is like owning a pet, it requires upkeep, maintenance, and attention. The more websites you have the more confusing it is for people trying to figure out who you are and where to find you.  In that regard, I currently have 4 active websites:  * ThomasUmstattd.com * AuthorMedia.com* NovelMarketing.com* ChristianPublishingShow.com This is too many! And making it worse, AuthorMedia.com and NovelMarketing.com do basically the same thing for the same audience. So, I’ve combined NovelMarketing.com and AuthorMedia.com into one website.  I am going to talk about the right and wrong way to combine websites. This is something you may face, a lot of authors create websites for a book series or other effort and later decide they want to consolidate to one website.  But this is also an opportunity to explain a little bit about how Google works.  The Wrong Ways to Do It * Delete The Old Website* Delete the Old Website And Copy The pages over to the new website. What happens when you delete a web page: * Links from around the web are pointing to that page. Maybe some bookmarks. All those links will now end in 404 errors. The people who have bookmarked that page will get confused and irritated.* Search reputation is lost. For the page and potentially for the site as well.   The Right Ways to Do it * Move the website with 301 redirects. * Copy the pages to the new site. WordPress has some automated ways to do this. In “tools” you will find two pages one for export and one for import.* Divi (affiliate link) also has a built-in import/export tool.  * Create a website within a website (AuthorMedia.com/novelmarketing) Tips * Don’t be too quick to shut down the old site. Let the two sites co exist for a few days while you make sure everything is moved over correctly. * Way Back Machine Sponsor 5 Year Plan to Become a Bestselling Author I crafted this plan with bestselling and award-winning author James L Rubart to be step by step guide through the first five years of your writing career. Learn each quarter what to do to succeed and avoid the mistakes that hijack the success of most authors. Learn more at NovelMarketing.com/courses. Featured Patron Jennifer Lamont Leo author of You’re the Cream in My Coffee   In 1928, small-town woman Marjorie Corrigan travels to Chicago and thinks she sees her first love–believed killed in the Great War–alive and well in a Chicago train station. Suddenly everything in her life is up for grabs.