websiteEvery day businesses shut their doors. Businesses are merged and acquired.

I have owned multiple businesses. At any given time I would consider the website to be the most valuable asset. Then again, these are powerful websites which rank in search. On some occasions, a website is worthless.

There are many reasons and ways to re-purpose a website

If ACME Steel Co goes out of business, Smith Steel Co may want to purchase the domain name. They may want the content, they may want to acquire other fixtures and assets as well, they may want the site’s rankings. The ACME site could say “Smith Steel Co” has acquired this business, or, if ACME was outranking Smith, Smith may want to shut down the old site and 301 Redirect the ACME site to their own.

All too often the website expires and black hat SEOs snag it and re-purpose it for spamming. If you have purchased or acquired a company be sure to properly handle the business’s domain name.

Is 301 Redirection Safe?

Yes, I have personally done this when one of my other companies acquired a smaller competitor.

I would not recommend 301 Redirection for a black hat SEO tactic, however, if the AMCE site has been acquired as an asset I see no reason why the site shouldn’t be redirected.

Legitimately, a company wants the good will and customer base from the first company.

301 Redirection Fails:

When 301 Redirecting a website, it is extremely important to have an experienced SEO person handle the redirect. I have seen this seemingly simple task become a nightmare. Here are a few pitfalls:

  • 302 Redirection. In 2015 I saw a very successful real estate Broker have their web hosting company handle their redirect. They totally screwed up. Then, I did something I never do, offered free advice. People hate free advice, or, at least, they ignore it; a lesson I have learned more than a few times now. The Broker insisted on listening to the web hosting company (who they were paying). Ranking plummeted overnight. Traffic went from 150 hits per day to 3. Yes, 3. For 6 months they insisted they were on the right path. This is BS. A proper 301 works instantly- I’ve done it a dozen times. Anyways, the point here is that the link juice was completely lost. Interior pages of the site which were linked to from very powerful resources around the web were no longer linked to. Almost like changing your address at the Post Office, if you don’t tell them the change is permanent, they will keep pointing your mail at the old address. Simple concept yet people screw it up all the time.
  • Content and URLs. If you don’t copy ACME.com/chain.html to Smith.com/chain.html and that page had content which was linked to, that link value is now gone.
    Bad links. If the ACME site had poor quality links pointing at it and you do a 301 then now the new site has low quality links via the “intermediate” link.
Len
Latest posts by Len (see all)
On January 13, 2016   /   SEO News & Tips   /   Leave a comment

Leave a Reply