Leverage power of high ranking domain for a company we acquired
-
Recently our company acquired one of our competitors (this was a business move, not SEO related). However, their website ranks in the top-10 for many of the keywords we target. Our website generally ranks higher in these SERPs, but I would still like to leverage the power of their domain to boost our main website up even further if I can. Their website is still up and running during the customer transition period but eventually (later this year) we plan to remove it and point all customers to our main website.
Any suggestions on the best way to use their website going forward?
-
Third vote for using the site and not redirecting it here (pending a re-brand of sorts to suit the fact that it's now owned by your company).
You have the opportunity to take up a lot more real estate in the SERPs than you do now, whereas redirection at worst removes the old site from the results. At best, you might see a small improvement in your rankings, but you're already ranking better than that site to begin with. As EGOL says, PageRank is logarithmic so if you're dealing with what is a weaker website (whether in actual PR or toolbar PR - the latter of which is a fairly outdated metric but still gets used for basic comparison purposes), it may actually be many times weaker than your stronger domain.
At best, using both site might allow you to target different sections of the same audience, appeal to different needs from the audience base (very large clients versus smaller businesses, etc.), and for results where you rank top 10 with both sites, you're about 20% of the results, not 10%
-
I agree with DJ123 that you should reconsider getting rid of the site.
I would take over this new site, study its traffic for a while and learn its true value.
Then, after you know the site, see if you can do anything to supercharge it. It is possible that reoptimization could improve its rankings significantly. These two sites might earn a lot more money separately than redirecting the acquired site to the new site. Two sites on the first page of Google keeps one of your competitors on the second page.
Keep in mind that a PR6 site could be 100 times more powerful than a PR4 site. So if you redirect a low PR4 to a low PR6 your gain might be as little as 1%. Don't count on kickass results.
This is a time to study the opportunities. As DJ says, you can rebrand and conduct business from the site. Also he suggests not to use one site as a link platform for the other. You can add a couple attribution links to reveal that you own both sites but don't go crazy.
-
Match up relevant pages on their site to pages on your site and create 301 redirects from old to new.
Edit: DJ's suggestion also works. Downside is that there is a lot more maintenance involved in running two websites.
-
Why not just keep their site up and rebrand everything with your company. You do own it, so don't just burn the site. You may be able to craft different content/topics which would be better suited for each site and thus capture a larger portion of your target audience.
It takes so much time to build up a site, it would be a shame to just switch it.
I would advise against using the sites for links to or from one another, that will hurt you in the long run.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Why some domains and sub-domains have same DA, but some others don't?
Hi I noticed for some blog providers in my country, which provide a sub-domian address for their blogs. the sub-domain authority is exactly as the main domain. Whereas, for some other blog providers every subdomain has its different and lower authority. for example "ffff.blog.ir" and "blog.ir" both have domain authority of 60. It noteworthy to mention that the "ffff.blog.ir" does not even exist! This is while mihanblog.com and hfilm.mihanblog.com has diffrent page authority.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rayatarh5451230 -
Recommended SEO Companies
Looking for advice here.... We are a small business looking to secure/increase rankings in the search engines. What are some recommended SEO agencies/companies that are effective with today's search engine optimization standards. _ Thank you_
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wickerparadise0 -
Primary Domain or Redirect?
We are starting a new travel guide for a resort town. I have bought an expired domain with decent related links and PR (which seems to have survived the transfer (4 months ago). Beofre we launch the new site I am trying to decide if we should use this expired domain as the primary URL for the new site or just do a permanent redirect and buy a new domain that better matches the theme of the site. I am obviously concerned with starting from scatch with a new domain. I am confident we can build some good rellevant links in a short time but this space is very competetive. Any input would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Locals0 -
Drop in rankings
Our keyword rankings have dropped greatly since July'12. Our site used to be in the top 8 rankings for the most competitive keywords on our industry and now rank 30+. Being new to this industry any help would be greatly appreciated. www.fragileremovals.com.au
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RobSchofield0 -
Homepage bombed from rankings
I'm working on a site that has historically had issues ranking the homepage. We cleaned up some on page issues and then it went into a high and low pattern - page 4 then page 12 etc (was static around page 9 before), settling at page 6. The link profile was not good and there were a high level of links that should have been no-follow as they were clearly looking paid for - we addressed this along with some other poor links. This effectively dropped ranking down to page 23, but not unexpected considering the very big drop in followed links. Meanwhile we have embarked on a fresh steady link building strategy with nice clean links, varied anchor text coming from varying DA domains, smattered with a few no-follow links - strongly focussing on being as natural as possible. At the Penguin update the homepage has totally disappeared. Frustratingly just after the update (same day) we removed a 301ed old domain from the profile. This was the old company URL which we discovered had a lot of spam linking associated with it. An oversight - there were other 301 domains that were removed some time ago which were totally unrelated to the main site and we were told all other domains were simply bought and redirected to stop hijacking - all but this were. Considering the work we have done would it be good assumption this domain 301 could be the underlying factor? So far organic traffic is steady, in fact a tad up. What would you guys do?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MickEdwards0 -
Why won't my sub-domain blog rank for my brand name in Google?
For six months or so, my team and I have been trying to get our blog to rank on page one in Google for the term "Instabill." The URL, http://blog.instabill.com, is a sub-domain of our company website and they both use the same IP address. Three pages on our www.Instabill.com site rank in the top three spots when searching our brand name in Google. However, our blog ranks 100+. For our blog, we are currently using b2evolution and nginx. We have tried adding static content on the home page, static content in the sidebar, static content on an About Instabill page, and optimizing blog posts for the keyword Instabill, but nothing seems to work. We appreciate any advice you can provide to us. Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Instabill
Meghan0 -
Exact domain or subfolder?
If I am targeting a specific keyword, from an SEO perspective is it better to create a subfolder on a url that has some authority or is it better use the exact domain with no authority? For example, if I want to target the word 'widgets' which is the better choice and why? **Choice 1: ** www.domainwithauthority.com/widgets Note: this domain has 1000 links to it **Choice 2: ** www.widgets.com Note: this is a brand new domain with 0 links
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mnipko0 -
Buying a banned domain
Hello all, I've found a exact match keyword domain that I'm able to buy. Problem is that I'm under the impression it might have been banned by google, currently it is only showing adsense without content. The site can't be found using the cache: or site: parameters in Google and the PR is 0. What are your experiences on buying a banned domain and how can I double check if the domain is banned? This blogpost suggests I should not buy it, any other opinions? Thanks. Hellemans
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hellemans0