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if you're dealing with what is a weaker website (whether in actual PR or toolbar PR - the latter of which is a fairly outdated metric but still gets used for basic comparison purposes), it may actually be many times weaker than your stronger domain.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
-
Backlinks from old domain
Hi, We have gone through a change of company brand name including a new domain name.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Agguk
We followed google recommendations at: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/83106?hl=en and it seems to have worked really well, the new domain has replaced the old in the google search results. My question: Still most of our backlinks, both anchor text and links use the old brand name and domain and it´s a slow process trying to update all references. Although they get redirected fine to the new domain (also following google recommendations), I wonder if the current scenario is doing any harm, SEO wise (other than the missed visual exposure of the new brand name) ? ...since the old brand name is not present at the new site I´m thinking of including "New brand name - previously old brand name" somewhere just to provide some sort of connection to all old backlinks, would that be unnecessary? I should mention that the old brand name actually includes our most important keyword but the new brand name does not. Thanks!0 -
6 months Later - 0 Domain Authority/Page Authority and losing Rankings
Hi Moz, Sorry if this comes across as a "Do My Job For Me" type of post but we are an E-Commerce store that have been live since January but have not seen any increase in performance on our site and over the past month, have even seen our rankings decrease. We have 1300 products on site and about 1500 pages in total. 1. As for on-site optimization, we have got 2 reviews and follow up reviews with a highly reputable reviewer from People Per Hour and solved any issues she has found. 2. Updated the Meta Data for products and Alt Descriptions for images focusing on the keywords we wish to rank for. We post weekly blogposts linking back to our products. 3. Social Media Campaigns with regular campaigns on FaceBook, Pinterest, Google+ and Twitter. 4. Attempted to build FOLLOW backlinks to articles relating to products on our site. We have also considered purchasing backlinks to improve our situation as we have yet to see any of these pages be crawled by Google over a month later. I have read a guides on Moz and other sites on how to improve our authority and improve rankings but none have offered much by way of practical solution. My question being, is this just a matter of patience or should I be worried/improving anything given we have 0 Domain Authority and Page Authority on all pages? Thanking you in advance, SEO Novice.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | csworkwear0 -
Our domain is ranking quite ok on google.ru, but not at all on Yandex. What could be the main differentiator here?
Hi, The internet let me down on this one. What's the issue? We are ranking quite ok on the most important keywords for our business with our .ru TLD on Google.ru. On Yandex however we don't seem to rank at all. What could be the main differentiating factor here? Could the fact that our servers are in th US play a role? Thank you for your time. Jacob
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Unilin0 -
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 -
Compare the rankings
Hi All, I have an example 2 domains are targeting the same keyword, one of them ranks higher then another. Here is the image from OSE http://www.freeimagehosting.net/udq2f Would you be able to tell ( based on the image )which of the domains is winning , "domain 1" or "domain2" and what exactly the " looser " should do to improve its rankings Rgds Webdeal
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Webdeal0 -
Aged domain and 301 redirect? (11 year old domain)
Hey everyone, I'm about to launch a new website for an accounting firm. They currently have a website, which has an 11 year old domain. They are doing very well locally for SEO, and i'm guessing it's because of the aged domain, as their website is very badly built, and contains almost no content. They would like to launch the new site with a simpler, easier to remember domain. If i launch the new site, point the aged domain using a 301 redirect, and do redirects for all of the old pages to the newer versions of them, is there a chance the company will lose their current SEO rankings? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RCDesign740 -
How can i get high ranking on yahoo?
My search terms are highly visible on Google but is hardly visible on Yahoo. This has been the case for a few months. What can I do to boost my ranking on Yahoo? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | csknight0 -
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