Company acquired but keeping website for now. How to rebrand without losing traffic?

[KMofOutlier]

A client has been acquired by a larger company who will eventually absorb client's website but this could take some time (a year or more). We have posted notice of the acquisition on their current site now, but it's time to make the rebrand of current site a priority. Since this site could be functional for some time and still operates as a lead generator for the company, we don't want to negatively affect their web traffic.

Curious if anyone has experienced similar or if there are best practices we should be following for this transition? Domain will stay the same for now.

[Alagurajeshwaran]

If the domain is same you can do 301 redirect of top pages (old website) that ranks higher to the newer version of the web page.

Secondly, without affecting your ranking you can move your old website pages to a newer domain also. This works if you want to change domain without modifying the sitemap and individual URLs of your website.

Make sure you have the search console access (verified) to both the website domains, Back-up your website and database(s) to restore in case of any error. Launch the website in the new domain.

Do 301 redirect via your site’s .htaccess file (At the old website host). Use the code below

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.newerdomain.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.newerdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Once this is done, then login to Google Search Console and go to the old domain settings icon. There will be an option called "Change of address" click it and select the new domain. Now go to the new domain property and add XML sitemaps to Google.

That's it!

[willcritchlow]

Hi Kathleen,

I would think about this in a few phases (you may not do all of them):

1. "Pure" rebrand - affecting the design of pages on the site, but not which pages exist or their basic HTML structure - this is the safest from an SEO perspective, though you run the risk of damaging conversion rate etc and so it is worth testing as much as you can and rolling out cautiously if it is a large site (see my whiteboard Friday on this for example)
2. Website redesign / rebuild - affecting potentially anything on the site, but staying on the same domain - if as you indicate, you are going to roll the website into the acquirer's site, then I would do my best to avoid this stage - it's the riskiest without significant upside. If you can get away with #1 and #3 then I would do that. If you have to go through this stage, treat it as the serious SEO project that it is
3. Migration into acquirer's site - you described it as "absorb" the client's site - I would expect in most acquisitions that you would end up with some combination of existing pages on the acquirer's site that should be the target of redirects of your client's pages and the need for some new pages (based presumably on existing pages on the client's site). Scoping out this mapping is the most significant part of this step - everything else is a migration project to be handled with the normal care and attention to detail

One thing to mention: we have seen people make assumptions that if you combine websites A and B, that the combined website will have the traffic of A+B. This is rarely the case for reasons of overlap / cannibalisation even if the migration and redirects function perfectly. So you are right to be cautious. The more overlap there is between the acquirer's site and your client's, the lower I would forecast the combined traffic. The more distinct they are (and hence the more your client's site could eventually migrate into a subfolder of the acquirer's site for example) the closer you might get to A+B.

I hope that all helps.

[KMofOutlier]

Thank you for your reply. I do think the "pure" rebrand stage is where we are at for now, with the full migration taking place sometime in the future. That will be the true challenge from a lead generation perspective, to ensure our client's services aren't lost in the larger ecosystem.

For now, we'll proceed with #1 (with caution!) and start planning for #3.

Appreciate the assistance!

[KMofOutlier]

Alagu, thank you for your reply. Currently we'll be staying on the same domain, however we expect to need to migrate relevant content to the acquirer's site in future, at which point we'll need to consider the 301s.

Thanks!