Transcript
Hi guys and welcome to another edition of Zupo SEO Talk & Tea.
This conversation is SEO tips for when acquiring or buying businesses. This is very important because many small businesses actually purchase other companies before they get started. So this is a very common in [inaudible 00:00:18] restaurants and other small mom and pop shops. They'll often buy the business from somebody else. So this is very important when it comes to SEO. In addition, for the bigger companies who acquire other companies through either corporate acquisitions or just general global acquisitions, this is also very important.
So before we jump in, though, I want to introduce the team. We have our special guest [inaudible 00:00:39] cake. It is a pretty pricey tea. I think I've looked it up. I think this case costs like 150 to 180 bucks. It was a gift from my uncle and it's a Pu'Er Tea, which is a fermented tea that I like to drink. This one was particularly smooth too and I really like enjoying this tea on a cold morning, even though it's really sunny right now. I guess the sun has decided to come out while I was filming, but that's okay. It never hurts to have more sun, but anyways, let's go ahead and talk about the conversation, SEO when it comes to acquiring companies or buying them out.
So this is important because many companies do so when they get started. I have worked with many dentists and restaurants and even a bigger agencies who have started by acquiring other companies. It's not as uncommon as you would think, but the first thing that I would remind everybody is that usually what happens is when you buy a company, they have a different name, they have a different style and you want to change the name, give it a... We're going to spruce up the marketing of it. That's cool. I would do the same, but what I would say is...
Number one loss asset is you need to SEO the old site into your new site. So that's just mumble jumble [inaudible 00:01:49] saying you need to merge the sites. What that means is... Let's say you are a pizza shop. I always use pizza. Let's say you're a pizza shop and you buy Joe's Pizza and you are renamed to Jason's Pizza. That's cool. I'm assuming the old URL was joespizza.com. Well, if you're going to rename the site to jasonspizza.com, you either buy jasonspizza.com and then you're going to move everything over there. That's cool, but what often... This is where the big mistake a lot of companies make. They abandoned the old URL. They don't need it anymore because I'm not going to use it, but unfortunately that is not the case.
If Joe's Pizza has been around for a while and especially if they rank really well, you need to make sure you... You've already bought the company. That means you bought all their assets. That is an asset and you need to make sure you use it. I'm almost flabbergasted how many companies and business people lose that opportunity. It's a huge investment that would circumvent years of SEO work. So I don't want it to be alarmist, but I'm just telling you, it saves you years of SEO work.
So let's say Joe's Pizza did rank very well for pizza in the local area. Well, what you would have to do is when you've got your own new site, jasonspizza.com, what you need to do is do a site merger or a site transition, or a 301 redirect. so the best way to do it is called a site migration where you are migrating all of Joe's Pizza into Jason's Pizza.
The reason why site migration, and that term is very important, is key to this is Google has a system called site migration where they understand companies will change brands, change URLs. They have the site migration, so that companies can essentially document to Google I am changing the address of this old site to this new site and the reason why that is important, it will transfer all the SEO value over. So some companies can get a little territorial and say, well, we want to abandon the old guard. That's cool, but when it comes to SEO value, it's all about ranking. All the links and assets that company has ever attained, that is what you bought. You need to merge it and transfer it over or migrate it to your new site. So in this case, Joe's Pizza must be migrated over to Jason's Pizza and how you do that is through a series of 301 redirects where you map one to one.
For example, a home page of Joe's Pizza must go to Jason's Pizza's homepage. The about us page goes to the corresponding about us and so on and so forth. Migrate all the content and all the pages over to the new site. Transfer it over and then that way when you document it with Google, Google will not only move everything over, they will put the new site's rankings right where the old site was. So if Joe's Pizza was number one, well now Jason's Pizza will be number one because the site was migrated well. I would encourage you to do that and then if there are things you want to remove, remove them later, make sure your ranking's number one first after the migration.
Second, let's say you're acquiring businesses. So let's say you are acquiring them, but you're maintaining your bread. You're just bringing them in house. Let's say I'm Jason's Pizza right now and I am buying Joe's breadsticks and Bob's spaghetti because I think that they all should work together. In that case, you want to merge the sites. So what that means is you don't do a site migration per se. Oh wait. No, I'm mistaken, sorry. I'm talking too fast. You do want to do a site migration with those two old sites to your current site.
So what you would do then is just map out the pages from there that are the most relevant into your current website. So for Joe's breadsticks, what you would have to do first, get all that content over and have unique pages on your own site about breadsticks and the spaghetti one as well. 301 map them as closely [inaudible 00:05:30] as possible. So their homepage probably doesn't need to go to your homepage, but it can go to the breadsticks page or it can go to the homepage. It doesn't truly matter what's an acquisition type. Just map them out and then you can merge them together. What's more important is that when you bought them, you have certain keyword groups that mean a lot to you. Those are the most important when it comes to the content to move over into your site, to have specific pages. If you're trying to rank for those keywords, then you make sure you map those out.
Those other ones like about us pages, those don't matter as much. It matters much more about the content that is key to the keyword groups you're trying to rank for and if you have bought and acquired these companies, you most likely are concerned about ranking for breadsticks and spaghetti as well.
So in practice in summary, I know that this is a little confusing. Let's say I have Jason's Pizza. I bought Joe's breadsticks. I'm going to create a breadstick section of my website. Have it very similar to Joe's breadsticks, have similar content, map the 301 redirects and then merge that one. Then when that's done, I would then do the spaghetti thing. Same thing there, move spaghetti content over, start 301 mapping and then site migrate that one as well. Therefore, you can merge all the sites because therefore what the most important asset about this is what you might be able to... Not even might, you will have a better chance of maintaining the rankings that Joe's breadsticks had and Bob's spaghetti had. If they were already ranking, you can migrate that into your own site and then second, all the SEO assets they had ever accumulated through a [inaudible 00:06:56] links can be driven back to your site.
That's why it's really important to site migraines. Do not sell the URLs of company's you have bought. Keep them in house, merge them with their site. Therefore, you can attain all the assets. You can get rid of them later, but that's a whole other conversation, how to unload URLs and SEO sense, but when buying or acquiring websites, do not sell the URL and do not let it die out. Merge them together with your site through site migrations and 301 redirects. That will help your site leaps and bounds.
So if you are thinking about buying or acquiring companies, please do so. Or if you have recently done it, make sure you don't sell that URL. Please reach out if you have any questions. These are very important. It can really expedite any SEO processes you guys need to take. You guys, but I hope that was really helpful, but if you guys found that valuable or anything, please like, and subscribe. I'll let you know, those likes and subscribes really do help us make more of these videos and if you found this valuable, I really hope to see you guys again soon. I really hope this information is helpful. And again, like always, you can always reach out to ask more questions, but until next time, I'll see you guys again. Thanks.