Strategy for retiring brand

[gcdtechnologies]

Hi guys,

I have a client who bought over a fairly well known competitor. They now want to amalgamate the brands and redirect visitors from the competitor's site to their site. There is a healthy volume of organic search queries for the competitor's name. I was thinking about the following strategy:

• Email all subscribers to let them know about the change
• Use a meta refresh redirect on the competitor's site to explain about the move
• After a set period, remove this meta refresh and replace with a 301 redirect
• Use a canonical tag on the competitor site assigning value to the main brand
• Set up a landing page on the main site that's optimised for the competitor's brand name and explains about the move.

Do you think that this is a good strategy for managing the transition?

Thanks!

[KevinBudzynski]

Yes. I would also distribute a press release and have the email link to it (or a link to your landing page) for additional info to keep the email minimum in length.

[gcdtechnologies]

Thanks Kevin. I'm planning to link the email to the landing page, which will hopefully also pick up organic queries for the old site's name. I'll include a press release in the to-do list!