Guys, SEO help needed here - I’d like to know your opinion even though right now I’m pretty sure it’s a “ask three people, get five opinions” issue. We have two subpages: the first provides detailed information about our tool’s functionality, which is a wizard designed for creating work schedules; the second offers an Excel template that enables users to manually generate their own work schedules. Naturally, both pages respond to the same search query for “work schedule”. Previously, both subpages were displayed in Google’s search results. However, the search engine now appears to prefer the page with the template, which is not ideal for our business interests. To address this issue, our SEO agency has recommended redirecting traffic from the template page to the page that describes the tool’s functionality. They also suggest adding a “Download Template” button on this page. Our concern, however, is that redirecting traffic from the more popular subpage may result in a significant loss of traffic overall. We are seeking advice on the best course of action and would appreciate any insights or experiences others may have had in similar circumstances. Thanks!

A 301 permanent redirect from the template page to the other page, merging content of both the pages is the best bet for your company. In longer term the temporary traffic lost should be minimal and google will soon start ranking the other page in place of template page.

Thanks @Blogging Surgeon - so now merging is winning 3:2, I just need the the advantage to be higher than that 🙈 Do you know any SEO Slacks that I may join to ask that question to broader public? Thanks a lot in advance!

Trust the suggestion of your already hired agency. They are right about this. You can continue asking your question but you can't dodge the bullet here. Sahil is right. Just do it.

@Magdalena Krzemieniewska There is a subreddit called as r/bigseo where you can consider asking this question. But keep in mind all that can happen is SEOs or other professionals can guide you on the best practices to follow. There is no way to predict the exact outcome of this scenario and how google will rank the pages afterwards.

Agree with Sahil. 👍

Hello everyone! Thank you for sharing your opinions. It was great to receive such a high response rate, which is not very common. Interestingly, when I asked the same question in a few other communities, people advised me on how to maintain a good relationship with my partnering agency instead of focusing on the technical aspects of SEO. Funny! However, the truth is that we have had trust issues with the agency in the past. We are currently completing our contract with them and waiting for a strategy from a different partner/agency. This partner is suggesting a different approach - optimizing both pages for different intents and linking them clearly to each other. Nonetheless, we have decided to proceed with the merger. We are currently working on site changes, and I have already created a prototype that looks promising. We are providing users with the option to either start a trial period of the current tool or select “Use a template” and be automatically directed to the template linked at the bottom of the page. This approach ensures that all content related to the topic is presented on one page, so we are keeping our fingers crossed that it will work wonders! 😉