Merging websites
-
My company (A) is about the merge with another company (B). The long-term plan is not to keep their brand or website.
In terms of the merge process, I have been doing a bit of research and this is how I'm thinking about doing it so far., which is open minded about changing...
- On the homepage of company B, do a 302 redirect to an information page on the same website which details the merger. This will only be for a year. After a year has passed, do a 301 redirect to the homepage of company A
- Do 301 redirects from all other pages to similar pages on company A. For pages that don't correspond, either do a 302 to the 'merger detail page', or do a 301 to the homepage of company A.
- Bring across any content that is effective at driving traffic.
- Contact all high authority websites that have links to company B and request for them to be updated.
Any tips/corrections appreciated.
Stu
-
That's great - thank you both.
Stu
-
I'd skip step one and just have an additional pop-up/notification bar on A explaining the merger when the visitor is redirected from B. For pages that don't correspond, just redirect to homepage. That way you save a year of less-than-optimal rankings.
I would review the analytics of B and transfer all of the high ranking pages/content to A, set up 301s. Then do the outreach for link changing.
-
I think you have a solid plan, my only thought is not to use the 302. It won't pass link juice over from that home page (Probably their most important) onward to the official site. I would either just 301 right away to the new site, or do a placeholder on the homepage explaining the merger with links to important pages on site A.
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
-
Merging Two Sites: Need Help!
I have two existing e-commerce sites. The older one, is built on the Yahoo platform and had limitations as far as user experience. The new site is built on the Magento 2 platform. We are going to be using SLI search for our search and navigation on the new Magento platform. SLI wants us to 301 all of our categories to the hosted category pages they will create, that will have a URL structure akin to site.com/shop/category-name.html. The issue is: If I want to merge the two sites, I will have to do a 301 to the category pages of the new site, which will have 301s going to the category pages hosted by SLI. I hope this makes sense! The way I see it, I have two options: Do a 301 from the old domain to categories of the new domain, and have the new domain's categories 301 to the SLI categories; or, I can do my 301s directly to the SLI hosted category pages. The downside of #1 is that I will be doing two 301s, and I know I will lose more link juice as a result. The upside of #1, is that if decide not to use SLI in the future, it is one less thing to worry about. The downside of #2, is that I will be directing all the category pages from the old site to a site I do not ultimately control. I appreciate any feedback.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KH20171 -
Desktop vs. Mobile Website - ranking impact
Working on develop mobile pages using dynamic serving method, we are planing on only develop number of important pages (not the whole site) to be mobile friendly. To keep the consistency of the user experience, the new mobile site will only have internal links to pages that are mobile friend. Questions: If an existing non-mobile page ranking #1 on mobile SERP today, this page will not have a mobile friendly version, and will not link in the mobilefriendly site. will there be any impact to the ranking. Assuming: When Google mobile/Smartphone bots will not see a link to this page. The page will still accessible to Google desktop bots.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tomchu0 -
Website not ranking
Firstly, apologies for the long winded question. I'm 'newish' to SEO We have a website built on Magento , www.excelclothing.com We have been online for 5 years and had reasonable success. Having used a few SEO companies in the past we found ourselves under a 'partial manual penalty' early last year. By July we were out of penalty. We have been gradually working our way through getting rid of 'spammy' links. Currently the website ranks for a handful of non competitive keywords looking at the domain on SEM RUSH. This has dropped drastically over the last 2 years. Our organic traffic over the last 2-3 years has seen no 'falling off a cliff' and has maintained a similar pattern. I've been told so many lies by SEO companies trying to get into my wallet I'm not sure who to believe. We have started to add content onto all our Category pages to make more unique although most of our Meta Descriptions are a 'boiler plate' template. I'm wondering.... Am I still suffering from Penquin ? Am I trapped by Panda and if so how can I know that? Do I need more links removed? How can I start to rank for more keywords I have a competitor online with the same DA, PA and virtually same number of links but they rank for 3500 keywords in the top 20. Would welcome any feedback. Many Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wgilliland1 -
A new website issue
Hello everybody,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mtmaster
I have started a new website 22 days ago at the beginning of this month and i have long articles. I think this should make the site appear in search results for long tail keywords even if they are not very relevant but as you can see in the attached image from my webmaster tools the impression count has suddenly increased to 100 then significantly decreased again. Even when i cancel "filter" option. Is this normal for a 3 weeks old website? or there is something i have to check? thanks. cLMa04l.jpg0 -
To merge or not to merge? That is the question.
I am planning to do something I never did, and I am wondering if it's really a good idea or not. I have four websites, all of the same company, each one with a different domain and different content: one has been the main official site for 16 years, 200 unique per month, indexed for 134 keywords, Domain Authority 17, 13 linking root domains one has been used as the main site from 2003 to 2006, it's focused on a specific business they actually discontinued, still online, no update since 2006, 500 unique per month, indexed for 92 keywords, Domain Authority 13, 8 linking root domains another has been a built on 2010 and maintained for less than year, and it's focused on a business they never really started, still online, no update since 2010, 3000 unique per month, indexed for 557 keywords, Domain Authority 25, 84 linking root domains a fourth one has been also built on 2010 and focused on a business never really started, still online, no update since 2010, 100 unique per month, indexed for 4 keywords, Domain Authority 6, 3 linking root domains Each website has traffic and links, all links being natural, they never tried to gain links in any way, they never did on page optimization, they never ever thought about SEO. They are not event interlinked. So, my idea is to merge all of them, putting websites 2, 3 and 4 as subfolders of the main site and replicating the old content there. Because those sites have traffic, incredibly one of the abandoned sites has 3000 unique per month, while the main site just 200! My doubts are: does it make sense to merge everything from a SEO prospective? A part from doing 301 correctly, what else should I be careful to do or not to do? website number 4 it's really outdated, content and structure is not easy to merge with the rest, traffic is really small, is it worth spending the time to merge it? Finally I also have a problem; customer didn't want to merge them, they agreed to, but they don't want visitors of the main site to be able to navigate to the old ones, so once moved and redirected I would have to put them in the sitemap of the main site but avoid linking to them on the actual "main" site. As far as I know google crawler doesn't like to find pages in sitemaps which are not reachable through a linking path on the website, is that correct? Is that going to make all the merging work useless? Should I convince the client to at least put small links in the footer or on a page linked from the footer?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | max.favilli0 -
Buying a domain and redirecting it to your website (improves seo?)
hello everyone, imagine that I have a website with Pagerank 7, PA50 DA59... and there is another website who is my competitor... so I decide to buy them... Pagerank3 PA30, DA25.. So I redirect this website to my domain...Using google webmasters I say to Google that it was redirected... So does this improve my SEO or no? Do I get part of the link juice and so on? Can this really improve my rankings?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FCRMediaLietuva0 -
Combining 2 Websites
Any assistance/feedback is greatly appreciated. The scenario: We currently own two website, and we'd like to combine them and eliminate some expenses. Although the content is very similar in nature, it is not exact. www.KF.com that is managed by a third-party provider & www.KFA.com that is managed by the manufacturer of the product we sell. (*sites url's are not accurate) We have ended the contract of KF.com, however, this site has the best SERP/SEO.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FX4nWOO
We assume we'll take a hit, no matter what we do - however when it comes to SEO, but what is the right move to make? Do a domain "Transfer/Redirect" of KF to KFA.com or Do we simply change the KFA.com to KF.com? Still very much a rookie when it comes to this stuff. I do have the ability to SEO the KFA.com webiste. Hoping this makes sense - and apologize for the bad url's just not sure I can actually post the true addresses. Thanks in advance.0 -
Website stuck on the second page
Hi there Can you please help me. I did some link building and worked with website last couple of months and rank got better but all keywords are on the second page, some of them are 11th and 12th. Is there anything I did wrong and google dont allow the website on the first page? Or should I just go on. It just looks strange keywords are on the second page for 2 weeks and not going to the first page for any single day. The website is quite old, around 10 years. Anyone knows what it is or where I can read about it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fleetway0