301 a purchased domain

[scanlin]

I've purchased a competitor. They rank well organically for keywords that I target, and I want to optimize the way I get value from their current rankings and traffic (and customers -- we will obviously market to their email/customer list). Which is better:

(1) use a 301 redirect for any access to their domain and point it to my home page. I think this would force Google to de-index all of their pages, right?

(2) put up a stub page as their homepage that announces the site has been bought, and have a do-follow link to my home page (which maybe is auto-redirected after 10 seconds or something)? Maybe this is better to keep their home page in Google's index for a while?

As for option (1), I thought I read somewhere recently that 301'ing a domain to the home page of another domain would no longer pass link juice (?). Maybe I should 301 the newly purchased domain to a sub-page on my site that explains the acquisition and asks them to sign up on my site?

Both sites are legit. No spamming happening here; just industry consolidation as one competitor acquires another. Thanks in advance...!

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Hi Mike,

Before we go any further, I highly encourage you to read this blog post I wrote about 301 redirects:

http://moz.com/blog/save-your-website-with-redirects

Even more important than the raw "link juice" passed from a 301, you need to consider the relevance of the pages. If  your goal is to preserve link equity, then 301'ing everything to the homepage is likely to not to pass much value, and render those redirected pages to a state of little value.

Does the purchased site have any content worth saving? Is it worth it to re-purpose this for your own means and keep the content live? This might make the most sense, but if not, does it feel right redirecting individual pages to the most relevant page on a one-to-one basis on your own site?

You also suggested another possibility: "Maybe I should 301 the newly purchased domain to a sub-page on my site that explains the acquisition and asks them to sign up on my site?" From a user perspective this makes sense, but be warned that it might not pass much link equity.

If it were me, I'd probably put a message on the site with an explanation that the site has been purchased, and offer a link to the new site. That said, be careful with repetitive, site-wide links. Then, after a time, redirect everything to the most appropriate pages on your own site.

Hope this helps. Cheers.

[scanlin]

Thanks, everyone! Based on your suggestions, I'm going to try and keep the competitor's site structure (to keep his ranking pages in G's index) and some of his content (don't want to tweak his on-page content too much or those pages might lose their rank). I will add links to each of the competitor's page pointing to the relevant internal page on my site. For smaller pages (that don't rank) I will 301 them to the closest matching page on my site.

I have looked at the 'landing pages' report in Analytics for the competitor's site and will manually adjust (ie explain the merger and add a link to relevant internal page on my site) any landing page that gets more than a little traffic.

His home page is the trickiest and most important. I want to post an announcement about the merger and get people to my site (the acquiring site) asap. I guess I'll do it with an announcement and a link to my site, as opposed to a 301, so that his visitors know what's going on. I will need to leave some of his content on his home page (and his title tag and meta-description tag) so that it still ranks for keywords I care about.

He and I had competing products and I intend to sunset his products after the merger, but keep his ranking content.

Any other suggestions regarding buying a rival, established site, are welcome.

[Matt-Williamson]

I think you are right about this Adam I should have looked what I wrote I didn't mean just point www.competitor.com to www.yoursite.com and have done I meant do a 301 over a single link from homepage that auto-redirects after 10 secs - you should always redirect at a page by page level as it helps the user find the content they are looking for. I think that redirecting at a blanket level like this can actually hinder rather than help you - see http://moz.com/blog/save-your-website-with-redirects

so thumbs up

Quick note as Cyrus says in the above linked post you won't see much benefit in terms of SEO by doing a blanket redirect to your homepage!! So don't waste your purchase take your time and make your redirects relevant Mike

Oh yeah one more quick thing I would have a glance at this thread on webmasterworld - http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4348449.htm

I have never personally bought a competitor and implemented a 301 redirect - what adam and myself speak of would be best practice for this in terms of pass authority from the site you have bought in terms of its link profile. However this is all done around the pretext of boosting your ranking and Google knows this goes on and isn't daft!

Have you done this in the same situation Adam - buying a rivals site? I would be very interested to hear yours or anyone else's first hand experience on this and I think it will help Mike as well. As you are redirecting between two sites that are well established in Google's index rather than between an established site and a new one or new structure, which I have done and think is more commonly the case for 301 use.

[MikeRoberts]

Alternately you could place canonicals across the newly bought site to the most relevant pages on your site and put up a message stating that Website X is now Website Y (with a link to your site) so everyone should change their bookmarks and start going to the other site. After a couple months, switch the canonicals to 301 to those pages. That way you don't wind up with bounces from people who wanted Website X but were confused/annoyed/perplexed/etc. from immediately going to a site they didn't want (even if its the site they need).

[Adam_Cochran]

I agree with you that a 301 is better than a single on site link, but 301'ing the entire site at the homepage level will result in all his competitors pages being deindexed and only passing the value of the domain not the internal pages.

While that may have made sense previously he stands not only to get more SEO value from redirecting internal pages to their equivalent on his site but FAR more inbound marketing value as even if people find his competitors site (which will still be indexed) the internal services pages are redirected to his pages.

[Matt-Williamson]

I personally would look at doing a 301 redirect from their website to yours. This will give you the most benefit as it will pass authority to your site from links that they have gained. Increased authority equals better ranks in general so this will be a good thing! Much better than having a single link from their homepage effectively passing the benefit of a single link from their site rather than the multiple links they have gained. Have a look at this video about the passing of pagerank through 301 redirects from Googles Matt Cutts

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Filv4pP-1nw

[Adam_Cochran]

Sometimes there is absolute nonsense when it comes to topics surrounding "the passing of link juice". You need to remember that:

A) Link juice isn't one set thing but rather a quick name given to the overall sphere of influence from an external website

and

B) Link Juice isn't on or off like a switch but rather in varying degrees.

Personally I would 301 any page that ranks for a keyword to your internal page that you wish to rank for that same keyword. One of the most important things for Google is deliverable intent. For example in the mobile search market plenty of websites redirect users on mobile to the mobile version of their site. But if the clicked moz.com/article.html rather than get directed to m.moz.com/article.html they are just redirected to m.moz.com and fail to hit their intent. This causes a devaluation and an increase in bounce rates.

You want people searching for keywords to still find your solutions. So 301ing the entire site to your homepage is a bad idea. However, if you 301 a page that ranks for "LinkedIn SEO" to your page on linkedin SEO you are keeping the value in the same intent and niche and delivering the user to what they want.

While on the main page of your competitor you should leave it up and put a note of the acquisition/merger but still keep the site structure and links to the pages you have 301'd so if a spider or person comes to your competitor site and clicks "services" they are 301'd to your services.

While this is a lot more work it's going to ensure you maintain their old value, increase your value and keep a flow of new customers coming your way from search results. It's well worth it!