SEO Implications when domain ownership and branding changes

[follr]

I have a couple questions for the SEOMOZ community - and/or it's leader, Rand, if at all possible   It is very important for us to have good information.

Scenario:

Company A:  National established leader in a niche product currently receives 49% of their traffic from branded keywords.  Company A wants to protect and further grow it's gains that have been made in SEO even after it is acquired by Company B.

Company B:  Is a much larger company that acquires Company A.

1.  What could happen to Google rankings when company A is bought out and Company B changes the registered owner and whois record?  Could Google see this as a signal that the ownership has changed and then re-evaluate the ranking of Company A's website?

2.  What would most likely happen if company B were to change the branding of Company A's established website?  Company A currently receives about half of it's traffic from branded keywords.  The acquiring company may want to change some of the SEO titles, ALT-Text, H1 tags, etc to also promote itself on the acquired company's site.

Thank you all in advance for your help!

[follr]

Hi Cyrus,

Thank you for your detailed answer!

By the way, I enjoyed your informative presentation at MozCon 2012, value and trust your opinion, and have enjoyed reading your posts.

I will pass your wisdom on to our CEO for consideration.

Thanks again!

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Hi there,

Sorry I'm not Rand, but let me add my 2 cents.

There's a lot of question over whether Google cares about when you change ownership of a domain. Back in 2005/6, Google became an official domain registrar (like godaddy and all the rest) so they have first-look access to registration data.

But do they care? Matt Cutts has been quoted in the past as saying when a domain changes hands, the old link values are reset to zero - but there have been many instances in the real world where this doesn't seem to be true at all.

In the end, a simple change in whois data shouldn't hurt you at all. But bigger changes, like title tags, page content and URL structures could have a major impact, depending on the severity of the change. If you want to preserve your current rankings, it's best to change things carefully while simultaneously building new links in order to send appropriate relevancy signals to Google.

To answer the second part of your question, the answer is... it depends. If your incoming links, content structure, etc are closely associated with your brand name, and the new company doesn't mess with those, it's likely you can maintain  decent rankings for your previous brand. On the other hand, if your current rankings are solely dependent on things like title tags that the new company wants to change, then you could be looking at trouble.

With over 200 ranking factors to consider, it all depends on where your current rankings are coming from, and what the new company wants to change. Obviously, the fewer changes the better to maintain current rankings, but this may not align with the new companies strategy.

On the other hand, the increased Domain Authority of the new company may actually give you a boost!

Hope this helps. Best of luck!

[follr]

Thank you!

[NakulGoyal]

In that case, I would not worry about it. Your domain/website will continue to rank for your Old Brand Name (unless it's a generic keyword). If it's a unique company / brand name, I would not worry about it.

Moreover, you can have an about us page detailing this transition on how Brand A became Brand B, just to make sure.

I hope this helps.

[follr]

It would continue to be a full, interactive web app, not a one page website.  It would have a variation of the original brand name, however.

[NakulGoyal]

Would you just have a 1 page website or still operate as is, just with a new Brand Name ?

[follr]

Company A's domain would likely host a page describing the acquisition, but would remain in place and continue to be the destination for conversions of Company A's products.

Company B may want to change the business name of company A.  It may add it's own business name to company A's business name.  This would all get re-indexed and we're worried about possible ramifications.

[NakulGoyal]

What would happen to Company A's domain ? Is it going to be hosted with a page describing the acquisition and then linking to Company B ?

[follr]

Thank you for your thoughtful response, but I don't believe Company A's site will be forwarded to Company B's.  Rather, we are thinking that company B may inject some of their branding (company name, etc) into company A's site.  No forwarding will likely occur.

[NakulGoyal]

Follr, Great question.

It's not a manual process for any Search Engine to evaluate sites/domains when whois registration, nameservers etc take place. So I would not really worry about #1.

From my experience in handling this exact situation, as long as you 301 redirect Company A to company B (if Company B's domain is what ends up being used as the only/primary website). If there are products / categories being transferred from Company A to Company B, then if you can setup 301 redirects for Red Widgets on Company A to Red Widgets page on Company B, you should be good. When you 301 redirect the domain name for Company A, which would have all sorts of brand backlinks and history and age in the SERPS, I have seen them transition over to the new domain.

So in this case, even when there's no mention of Company A in Company B's website, companyB.com ranks for Company A's branded keywords.

I hope this helps.