Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Company acquired but keeping website for now. How to rebrand without losing traffic?
-
A client has been acquired by a larger company who will eventually absorb client's website but this could take some time (a year or more). We have posted notice of the acquisition on their current site now, but it's time to make the rebrand of current site a priority. Since this site could be functional for some time and still operates as a lead generator for the company, we don't want to negatively affect their web traffic.
Curious if anyone has experienced similar or if there are best practices we should be following for this transition? Domain will stay the same for now.
-
Alagu, thank you for your reply. Currently we'll be staying on the same domain, however we expect to need to migrate relevant content to the acquirer's site in future, at which point we'll need to consider the 301s.
Thanks!
-
Thank you for your reply. I do think the "pure" rebrand stage is where we are at for now, with the full migration taking place sometime in the future. That will be the true challenge from a lead generation perspective, to ensure our client's services aren't lost in the larger ecosystem.
For now, we'll proceed with #1 (with caution!) and start planning for #3.
Appreciate the assistance!
-
Hi Kathleen,
I would think about this in a few phases (you may not do all of them):
- "Pure" rebrand - affecting the design of pages on the site, but not which pages exist or their basic HTML structure - this is the safest from an SEO perspective, though you run the risk of damaging conversion rate etc and so it is worth testing as much as you can and rolling out cautiously if it is a large site (see my whiteboard Friday on this for example)
- Website redesign / rebuild - affecting potentially anything on the site, but staying on the same domain - if as you indicate, you are going to roll the website into the acquirer's site, then I would do my best to avoid this stage - it's the riskiest without significant upside. If you can get away with #1 and #3 then I would do that. If you have to go through this stage, treat it as the serious SEO project that it is
- Migration into acquirer's site - you described it as "absorb" the client's site - I would expect in most acquisitions that you would end up with some combination of existing pages on the acquirer's site that should be the target of redirects of your client's pages and the need for some new pages (based presumably on existing pages on the client's site). Scoping out this mapping is the most significant part of this step - everything else is a migration project to be handled with the normal care and attention to detail
One thing to mention: we have seen people make assumptions that if you combine websites A and B, that the combined website will have the traffic of A+B. This is rarely the case for reasons of overlap / cannibalisation even if the migration and redirects function perfectly. So you are right to be cautious. The more overlap there is between the acquirer's site and your client's, the lower I would forecast the combined traffic. The more distinct they are (and hence the more your client's site could eventually migrate into a subfolder of the acquirer's site for example) the closer you might get to A+B.
I hope that all helps.
-
If the domain is same you can do 301 redirect of top pages (old website) that ranks higher to the newer version of the web page.
Secondly, without affecting your ranking you can move your old website pages to a newer domain also. This works if you want to change domain without modifying the sitemap and individual URLs of your website.
Make sure you have the search console access (verified) to both the website domains, Back-up your website and database(s) to restore in case of any error. Launch the website in the new domain.
Do 301 redirect via your site’s .htaccess file (At the old website host). Use the code below
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.newerdomain.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.newerdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]Once this is done, then login to Google Search Console and go to the old domain settings icon. There will be an option called "Change of address" click it and select the new domain. Now go to the new domain property and add XML sitemaps to Google.
That's it!
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
-
How can I outrank a website whose brand is named specifically after a product / service (and mine is not!) ?
Hi everyone, I've been working hard on my on-page SEO lately so I can gain visibility for my website. The results have been great and I am now on top of the SERP for the services I propose. I think that my content is almost fully optimize and** I've respected all the best practices (both on-page and technical SEO)**. However, there is one problem I just can't deal with for I don't have the knowledge, hence this post. I'm pretty sure that this issue is quite common for SEO experts. Here the thing: I offer dental emergency services, which is my core business. I'm ranked 4th for that request in my area, which is good, but I'd like to rank 1st as** I have a better DA and content than the 3 websites outranking me**. Also, I'm the first result for any other related services such as "dental services" or "dentist". However, when it comes to the theme "dental emergency", I'm constantly outranked by the same 3 websites. I ran an audit on their website but **my content and technical SEO is way better **than theirs. I suppose that the only reason I'm behind them is because they used "dental emergency" in their **Brand name **and, therefore, in the Home page URL. Every time someone is looking up online for "dental emergency", these websites will be on top of the SERP as I think that Google is unable to know whether the users are specifically looking for their websites (aka Brand) or for "dental emergency" services. Here is an example of a competitor: https://www.urgencedentairedemontreal.com/ (urgence meaning emergency in French). His whole Brand name and URL have been built after the "dental emergency." service. On the contrary, **my Brand name does not mention "urgence". ** I see that as a trick that is confusing Google. The fact that my competitors named their Brand after a specific service I also offer is real pain for my SEO. I also think it's really unfair as I've put a lot of effort in designing a nice website with great UX and content. This is the kind of practice that should be penalized in my opinion. Please, does anyone know any way to resolve this issue?
On-Page Optimization | | AlexTL0 -
Writing cornerstone content for a shop (eCommerce) website
Hi there I am trying to optimise my site to the best that it can be. Since the most recent Google updates, everything that I reading is saying cornerstone content with lots of valuable content is a really good strategy as it tells Google what is the most important content on your site. Writing articles that are well structured and have give the user a detailed overview of that subject. Lots of top SEO's are saying 3000 words plus on these pages. My question is, how do I go about this with and eCommerce site? Obviously that majority of the keywords that I want to target are product related and these are the pages that I want to come up in the search. How do I go about creating cornerstone content for these pages? I am thinking that one of my cornerstone pieces of content would be "The Ultimate Guide to [my main product category]". But that product has numerous products related to it, all of which have their own keywords, so how would this help the products to rank? The site had two main product categories, with numerous products under each of those categories. The two main categories are targeting my best performing keywords, but currently the landing page for these is the main product category pages. I am really struggling to work out the best strategy here. The content that I have on my actual products pages is comprehensive and covers a lot of detail about that particular product and has started to rank for product keywords, but I am guessing Google wouldn't consider that to be cornerstone content. I hope this make sense. Any advice anyone can give would be really useful. Many thanks in advance
On-Page Optimization | | Clojobobo1 -
My website have h1 tags , but still crawlers can't find them?
crawlers can't crawl my meta description and h1 tags even when they are present.
On-Page Optimization | | Green_Beauty0 -
Stagnant Traffic
The traffic on my site (http://www.tbreak.com) has been stagnant over the last few months. We're a news posting site and posting a good 4-8 posts per day and using Yoast plugin to make sure they are optimized, but traffic has not grown at all. What could be the reason for that?
On-Page Optimization | | tbreak.ae0 -
Should I redirect mobile traffic to a different url? Will it hurt SEO?
I'm working on a site that has lots of great content and ranks well but essentially the money is generated by affiliate links. I don't have a mobile version of the site but the company I'm affiliated with does offer a mobile redirect to their domain. Will redirecting mobile traffic to a different url hurt my SEO? I think the user will get a better experience by landing on a mobile page but I don't know if google will see it like that. Any thoughts?
On-Page Optimization | | SamCUK0 -
If I enbed the same video from my YouTube account on two different websites, will I get a duplicate content penalty?
I have a YouTube video I want to show my B2B and B2C customers. But I have a different websites for each. If I embed the video will I get duplicate content strike against me?
On-Page Optimization | | RoxBrock0 -
Two Word Company Name (Combined to One) & SEO
Hi All, I'm dealing with a company that has a two word name like "GreatCompany". They rank #1 for that but not for "Great Company". The phrase is not super competitive, but obviously they are not writing the company name with two words anywhere on their site. Has anyone had to deal with something like this? Thinking about creative solutions but I'm fairly sure we're going to need to use the name both ways to have an effect here (or use PPC to augment) but I don't really love the idea of doing that... will feel very odd and inconsistent for visitors. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | ketanmv0 -
URL length... is >115 now >255?
I've been having detailed discussions with a CMS provider on behalf of a client. Long URLs are the least of their problems however, the developer is arguing that Google has amended their algorithm and will now read URLs that are up to 255 characters long. I have stated that as far as I am aware, Google will still not read URLs over 115 characters... Before I stamp my feet, can someone confirm what is actually happening? SEOmoz still classes URLs >115 characters long as an amber issue. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Switch_Digital0