Best strategy for redirecting domain authority from an acquired site...?

[TGViaWest]

Hi all,

I'm an in-house for a company that made several acquisitions last year prior to my starting.  I'm just now hearing about several loose-ends websites that belong to companies that have been absorbed by us.

The question is how to best approach the task of utilizing that site's domain authority to our site's benefit.

There is already a link to the homepage in the header of the site in question (our logo's right under theirs) so we're already getting some linkjuice.  Looks like the whois information never changed.

Here are the options I'm considering:

1. Blanket redirect (all of their pages there into our home page) - not ideal.

2. Targeted redirect (try to "connect the dots" between content pages with similar subjects/keyword relevance - better than #1, but is it worth the extra effort?

3. More linking (add more strategically placed and keyword optimized links back to our site) - also more work, but certainly do-able if the consensus is to leave the site up.

4. Any other suggestions?

Thanks for your help everyone!

[TGViaWest]

To clarify: option #2 would result in the entire site being redirected (just a little more sophisticated that funneling all KW relevance and domain authority into our home page via blanket redirect).  Anything that didn't have strong SEO value would just get redirected into the home page.

Thanks for the feedback!

[TGViaWest]

Great feedback, thanks EGOL!  Unfortunately, nobody has access to the GA login, but at the very least I should be able to look at the server logs to determine traffic value.

[AgentsofValue]

It depends on how you view this acquired website.  I would generally consider either 1 or 3 from the options above.

If the site is a service that has a strong brand following and customers / visitors, you may just want to let it live it's own life.  A site like that can continue to build links naturally over time, further improving the value of the site.

So, if you let the site live it's own life, I would definitely use it to link to your other main organization website.  Perhaps put a news alert box on the homepage, disclosing the relationship between the two companies, and linking over to it with a brand text link.  Then find some internal pages on related topics, and cross link those with a rich anchor text link.

On the other hand, if the site doens't have much of a following, it might just be easier to 301 redirect it over to the main site.  You'll not have to worry about the maintenance of the old website, and you'll get the added benefit of the visitors from the old site and whatever link juice gets transferred over.

I generally don't like idea 2 so much, because it could be confusing to users, that some pages redirect to a completely different site.  Also, I'm under the impression that a 301 redirect has slightly less value that a link does.  If someone else has some insight on this, it would be great to hear it.

[EGOL]

A partial list of a domain's assets are...

-- content

-- traffic based upon keywords associated with that content

-- links

To take advantage of these you should do analytics on the domain to see what content pulls traffic, what content pulls links.  They see if there is a way to keep that content active and pulling traffic from the SERPs.

When I have purchased sites I have kept or rewritten lots of the content to avoid traffic loss for its keywords.  Then post that content on your main site and redirect the pages on the old site to hit that content.

This work might take a few days of study and repurposing for a small site but the traffic preserved and the strength of combining authority can be worth the effort.

..... and, as you suggest, keeping the site up and linking conservatively from it is an option... but if you get aggressive there is risk.