Successful business being acquired - How to save the SEO value of their site

[mikepetersonwi]

I have a client (Business A) that has bought another business in the same vertical (Business B.) Business B has good website with good SEO results. The plan is to shut down the website of Business B and integrate their location into Business A's website. Beyond updating citations to point to the correct URL and redirecting all pages from Business B's website to the equivalent in Business A's website, does anyone have suggestions to maximize Business B's current SEO results?

 

[HoosierBuff]

You want to do a formal change of address in Google WMT. Also, I would keep the GMB listing for the old location as long as possible - proximity is so important to search, and this gives them extra reach.

 

[Yan Gilbert]

Something to think about... will Biz B's name be anywhere on Biz A's site? Not sure how many branded links are coming into Biz B, but after the switch it might confuse people if they expect to land on a Biz B page and the page loads a different company. With that in mind, if there are strong Biz B brand mentions out there, you could try to contact those site owners to get those updated.

 

[mikepetersonwi]

Yan,

Yes, there will be a location page for Biz B on Biz A.s site I was thinking that I should redirect most, if not all of Biz B's pages to the location page on Biz A. If I include redirecting the root URL of BizB to the Locations page o Biz A's site, that should help Biz B in local search and organic search I would think.

Thoughts?

 

[Yan Gilbert]

That makes sense. And the old service type pages would best be redirected to the appropriate page on Biz A site, like you originally said. I have not done a migration like this before but in general it sounds right.

I am sure some others will bring up further elements to be aware of as well.