Merger & Acquisition Best Practices
-
Our company (DA 40) recently acquired another company (DA 20). The domain for the acquired company is up, and I am being asked if we should keep paying for the domain. I have a couple of questions regarding this.
- Is it best practice to continue paying for the older domain and do 301 redirects to our website? If yes, do I have to add 301 redirects for individual matching pages? For example, if the old site has the topic XYZ, should a 301 go to our site if we have a similar page topic XYZ? What about contact pages, about us, etc?
- Do we redirect all non-matching topics to the new home page? Or in the case of their blogs, do we redirect their blogs to the new blog home page even though we are not keeping their old blogs?
- What if our company keeps acquiring other companies, are we to assume we have to keep paying for the domains of the acquired companies?
- Is there anyone out there that would say stop paying for the old domain and just review the company's inbound links, reach out to those sites, and make sure they link to the new site instead?
Thanks for the help in advance.
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
-
Unsolved Fintech SEO: How to Get Started
My question is how to begin developing an SEO strategy for finance and software websites as an SEO Analyst. This is two entirely different industries which have merged together into fintech and we want to start building an organic traffic roadmap as well as technical changes that come with government and finance quid-lines.
Getting Started | | praveenyadav0915
The core function it deals with are payment collection, payment disbursement, invoices, SAAS as solution, automated payments, payment links, etc.
Let me know what steps and measure need to take place before creating any roadmap.0 -
Migration + Change of Address Tool used - previous site de-indexed!!
OMG disaster! Recently migrated my site womencycles.com to moonrise.health. Painstakingly went through each URL manually to map out redirects, notified Google via change of address tool. Bam. My old website has disappeared from Google and my new site has thus lost all it's organic (i.e. redirected) traffic. I don't get it. I think I have done everything by the book, but it seems my old site has disappeared and no authority or link juice has been passed to my new site by the 301s, as the new site isn't ranking either. Some examples: https://www.google.com/search?q=women+cycles&oq=women+cycles&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i65j69i61l2j69i60.1834j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 'women cycles' previous position 1
Technical SEO | | tikitaka
https://www.google.com/search?q=chaffed+vagina&oq=chaffed+vagina&aqs=chrome..69i57.2370j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 - chaffed vagina, previous position 1 https://www.google.com/search?q=how+long+does+it+take+turmeric+to+shrink+fibroids&oq=how+long+does+it+take+turmeric+to+shrink+fibroids&aqs=chrome..69i57.1355j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 - how long does it take turmeric to shrink fibroids, previous position 1. Biggest traffic source pages were: https://womencycles.com/blog/top-10-home-remedies-that-claim-to-tighten-vagina-do-they-work/
https://womencycles.com/blog/sore-breasts-after-period-has-finished/
https://womencycles.com/blog/what-is-vaginal-gas-queefing/
https://womencycles.com/blog/tired-during-ovulation/
https://womencycles.com/blog/how-to-get-rid-of-saggy-vag-without-surgery/
https://womencycles.com/blog/vagina-chafing-causes-treatments-to-prevent-it-from-coming-back/
https://womencycles.com/blog/vaginal-dryness-during-pregnancy/ New blog articles on new site, with 301 redirect in place, but not ranking Screenshot shows my search traffic for my new site. Site migrated 13 June. Any ideas anyone??!Screenshot 2022-06-28 at 13.27.41.png0 -
Multilang site: Auto redirect 301 or 302?
We need to establish if 301 or 302 response code is to be used for our auto redirects based on Accept-Language header. https://domain.com
International SEO | | fJ66doneOIdDpj
30x > https://domain.com/en
30x > https://domain.com/ru
30x > https://domain.com/de The site architecture is set up with proper inline HREFLANG.
We have read different opinions about this, Ahrefs says 302 is the correct one:
https://ahrefs.com/blog/301-vs-302-redirects/
302 redirect:
"You want to redirect users to the right version of the site for them (based on location/language)." You could argue that the root redirect is never permanent as it varies based on user language settings (302)
On the other hand, the lang specific redirects are permanent per language: IF Accept-Language header = en
https://domain.com > 301 > https://domain.com/en
IF Accept-Language header = ru
https://domain.com > 301 > https://domain.com/ru So each of these is 'permanent'. So which is the correct?0 -
Is a Wordpress AMP plugin sufficient, or should we upgrade our WP theme to an AMP theme?
Hello there, our site is on a Flatsome Wordpress theme (which is responsive and does not support AMP), and we are currently using the AMP for Wordpress plugin on our blog and other content rich pages. My question is - is a plugin sufficient to make our pages AMP friendly? Or should we consider switching to a theme that is AMP enabled already? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tnixis
Katie0 -
How best to deindex tens of thousands of pages?
Hi there, We run a quotes based site and so have hundreds of thousands of pages. We released a batch of pages (around 2500) and they ranked really well. Encouraged by this we released the remaining ~300,000 pages in just a couple of days. These have been indexed but are not ranking any where. We presume this is because we released too much too quickly. So we want to roll back what we've done and release them in smaller batches. So I wondered if: 1. Can we de-index thousands of pages, and if so what's the best way of doing this? 2. Can we then re-index these pages but over a much greater time period without changing the pages at all - or would we need to change the pages/the URL's etc? thanks! Steve
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SteveW19870 -
Splitting One Site Into Two Sites Best Practices Needed
Okay, working with a large site that, for business reasons beyond organic search, wants to split an existing site in two. So, the old domain name stays and a new one is born with some of the content from the old site, along with some new content of its own. The general idea, for more than just search reasons, is that it makes both the old site and new sites more purely about their respective subject matter. The existing content on the old site that is becoming part of the new site will be 301'd to the new site's domain. So, the old site will have a lot of 301s and links to the new site. No links coming back from the new site to the old site anticipated at this time. Would like any and all insights into any potential pitfalls and best practices for this to come off as well as it can under the circumstances. For instance, should all those links from the old site to the new site be nofollowed, kind of like a non-editorial link to an affiliate or advertiser? Is there weirdness for Google in 301ing to a new domain from some, but not all, content of the old site. Would you individually submit requests to remove from index for the hundreds and hundreds of old site pages moving to the new site or just figure that the 301 will eventually take care of that? Is there substantial organic search risk of any kind to the old site, beyond the obvious of just not having those pages to produce any more? Anything else? Any ideas about how long the new site can expect to wander the wilderness of no organic search traffic? The old site has a 45 domain authority. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Pagination & SEO
Hi In one of my other Q&A's someone mentioned I may need to look at pagination. For instance, are these pages counted as 'new' pages in Google's eyes when clicking on pagination? http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/plastic-storage-boxes http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/plastic-storage-boxes#productBeginIndex:30&orderBy:5&pageView:list& Does anyone have any advice on what I could do? It's not something I have had much experience with. Thank you Becky
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Advanced: SEO best practice for a large forum to minimise risk...?
Hi Hope someone can offer some insight here. We have a site with an active forum. The transactional side of the site is about 300 pages totals, and the forum is well over 100,000 (and growing daily) meaning the 'important' pages account for less that 0.5% of all pages on the site. Rankings are pretty good and we're ticking lots of boxes with the main site, with good natural links, logical architecture, appropriate keyword targeting. I'm worried about the following: crawl budget PR flow Panda We actively moderate the forum for spam and generally the content is good (for a forum anyway), so I'm just looking for any best practice tips for minimising risk. I've contemplated moving the forum to a subdomain so there's that separation, or even noindexing the forum completely, although it does pull in traffic. Has anyone been in a similar situation? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iProspect_Manchester1