HVAC company bought another company - keep website open?

[HoosierBuff]

Hi All,

I have a customer who just bought another company in a different town, about 10-15 miles away.

The company he bought, their site ranks well, and gets more traffic despite being in a less dense area.

The business owner doesn't want to support two sites, and wants to shut down the other site, and consolidate under his new brand name.

My fear is, if we shut down that site, and 301 redirect it, it will never do as well - even with a solid location page etc. Am I just a chicken? (let's assume that the actual location in GMB will remain the same - though that is another issue I'm fighting).

 

[mborgelt]

I understand your worries but we did this with a site last year and it now get more traffic than both sites used to combined. Google now passes PageRank from all 3xx level responses so you should be in the clear as long as you keep an eye on technical elements.

 

[Patrick Garde]

Assuming the 301 redirect went smoothly, I think you will have no problem.

We made a similar change when we rebranded our company and the authority was passed on to the new website with ease.

 

[HoosierBuff]

Thanks. . .

So, the plan would be, create a good location page on the new site, so that all the good location signals and content remain, and make sure to keep the GMB in place as is, so that it retains its traffic.

 

[JoyHawkins]

My advice would just be to make sure you set up the redirect correctly and do the following:

1. Make sure all URLs on the site you're removing are redirected to the most-related page on the new site. I've seen lots of people that just redirect the homepage and forget about all the internal pages.

2. Make sure you redirect to the canonical version of the site you're keeping to avoid slow loading speed. Ex: I see sites all the time that redirect the old domain to the http version of the new site which then redirects to https etc and you have lots of redirect loops.

 

[HoosierBuff]

Thanks JOY! Great tips. I appreciate the help. I'm presenting the plan to the client today.

I will post back with the results!