How to manage this business merger?

[bendc]

So I've been asked to do a new website and some SEO for a business local to me and here's the situation.

Imagine ABCcarpetcleaning has purchased a local business named ABCpressurecleaning (both of their business names and websites have the same common name at the start followed by the name of the main service).

They are going to rebrand and create a new website called ABCcleaning so that their business name isn't hyper specific to a service.

Both sites do not have a GMB/GBP, but both rank very well organically for great keywords such as carpet cleaning city name, pressure cleaning city name, etc.

They are unsure how to handle customer enquiries through phone and email because of the rebranding and name change.

Do they answer the phone as ABCcarpetcleaning or ABCpressurecleaning and then a van named ABCcleaning shows up at the door? Or do they answer the phone as ABCcleaning and some of the customers may be confused if they have the right company or not?

It's strange for a pressure cleaning company to offer carpet cleaning services, which is one reason why the owner wants to create a new entity and be able to cross sell the services to clientele.

Same situation for emails. Do they receive email enquiries through their respective domain names and they reply as the domain name or the new business name? Or do we make it so that all contact form enquiries just go straight to the new business website by changing the email address in the contact form settings?

The owner wants to keep both original sites as they rank very well, but funnel the new customers from the sites to the new business without causing too much confusion. Luckily, both businesses do have a very similar name.

The new business site will have a GMB/GBP created as ABCcleaning with all new and existing customers funnelled to it to leave reviews.

The owner is also concerned that over time, the new site may have competitive rankings to the original two and cause confusion when people find them through Google and potentially contact him twice thinking they are separate entities.

Has anyone here been through something similar or have any ideas for managing this?

Thank you.

 

[ElizabethRule]

I've never run into something quite like this, but sounds interesting! What I would do is think more about how the three sites will interact with each other. I would assume since there's only one business, you only want one website. I would hesitate to start a brand new site for the business when you already have those other two websites floating around. I would look into picking the better performing of the two existing websites, and then create a new content for that site explaining the new business name, and all the new services that they're going to offer under this new business name. You can redirect the other website to this existing site to for added SEO bonus. It will be a lot of content overhaul and optimization, but having 1 site vs 3 is usually much easier to manage and rank.

This depends though (doesn't it always?!) on how well the sites are doing for their given services in their service areas, carpet cleaning is very different than pressure washing, you may want to keep both sites IF they are knocking it out of the park for their given keywords. Still, I would hesitate to add a third site into the mix especially when it's just gonna be talking about carpet cleaning and power washing. It would probably end up competing with the two existing sites and could be hard to get to rank.

Getting a GBP for ABC Cleaning is a good idea. Just make sure that whatever phone number is on that listing when someone calls the person on the other line has to answer ABC Cleaning. If the person answers and says a different business name and Google calls you could run into issues with suspension.

 

[bendc]

I've never run into something quite like this, but sounds interesting! What I would do is think more about how the three sites will interact with each other. I would assume since there's only one business, you only want one website. I would hesitate to start a brand new site for the business when you already have those other two websites floating around. I would look into picking the better performing of the two existing websites, and then create a new content for that site explaining the new business name, and all the new services that they're going to offer under this new business name. You can redirect the other website to this existing site to for added SEO bonus. It will be a lot of content overhaul and optimization, but having 1 site vs 3 is usually much easier to manage and rank.

This depends though (doesn't it always?!) on how well the sites are doing for their given services in their service areas, carpet cleaning is very different than pressure washing, you may want to keep both sites IF they are knocking it out of the park for their given keywords. Still, I would hesitate to add a third site into the mix especially when it's just gonna be talking about carpet cleaning and power washing. It would probably end up competing with the two existing sites and could be hard to get to rank.

Getting a GBP for ABC Cleaning is a good idea. Just make sure that whatever phone number is on that listing when someone calls the person on the other line has to answer ABC Cleaning. If the person answers and says a different business name and Google calls you could run into issues with suspension.

Thanks for your input.

Both sites rank very well organically for their industry related keywords, which means keeping them both would be the priority.

I will point out that both businesses offer other services related to their industries, so it's not just carpet cleaning and just pressure cleaning. Each business offers about 8 different types of cleaning services, which would bring the total to at least 15 services for the merged brand.

The owner states that merging them into one entity is better so that there's one set of uniforms, vehicles, point of contact, and branding across the board. It's also very strange if a pressure cleaning company is trying to upsell someone carpet or upholstery cleaning services, in comparison to a more general company name that offers many services.

Another option may be to create the new site and get a GMB/GBP for it, but don't perform SEO on the site and let the original two companies continue to hold their organic positions while funnelling reviews to the new site.

 

[ElizabethRule]

That's an idea, but keep in mind the website you link to from your GBP has a major impact on rankings. So whatever keyword(s) you want the GBP to rank for in maps you will need to make sure to link to a website that performs well organically for that and related terms. Thats why I recommend 1 website that can (hopefully) rank for all terms, as that will allow the GBP to rank in maps better for all those terms as well.