Client rebranded with a new website but can't migrate now defunct franchise website to new website.

[Tarek_Lel]

Hi everyone,

My client is a chain of franchised restaurants with a local domain website named after the franchise.

The franchise exited the market while the client stayed and built its own brand with a separate website.

The franchise website (which is extremely popular) will be shut down soon but the client will not be able to redirect the franchise website to the new website for legal reasons.

What can I do to ensure that we start ranking immediately for the franchise keyphrase as soon as the franchise website is shutdown.

We currently have the new website and access to the old website (which we can't redirect)

Thanks,

T

[Tarek_Lel]

Immediately is a bit of an over projection but what I mean is rank for it before the search term for the franchised restaurant returns to mediocracy.

[Linda-Vassily]

A way to get a quick result is with an Adwords campaign. Create a landing page for people who are looking for the website that is gone, and explain how your website is filling that niche. In the meantime, keep building your organic presence. [Easier now, without the big competition.]  After people have learned to come to your website, you can back off the paid search and refine your organic approach.

[Paddy_Moogan]

Hi Tarek,

Thanks for the question.

Where does your client currently rank for the franchise keyphrase? If you rank well on page 1, it shouldn't be too difficult to push yourself a bit further up once the established website has gone.

However, it really depends on what happens to the domain of the franchise. It may be closed down by there still be some form of holding page / parked page which means it stays in the rankings for a while. Do you know what is going to happen to it?

On a related note, is there any chance you could acquire the domain?

In terms of what you can do. Here are a few suggestions:

• Make sure the brand name features prominently in your on-page SEO elements and internal links
• See if you can realign links that are pointing to the franchise site and see if they will point the links to you instead - if the franchise site is closing down, this could work very well and if you can make the anchor text the name of the brand, it should help your rankings
• Make sure your company name and citations / local links are all using the company name correctly

I hope that helps!

Paddy