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The Search Marketing Advisor Newsletter Article:
October 2005, Volume 4, Issue 10

search engine marketing

When Mergers & Acquisitions Require Merging Two Websites: The SEM Impact

by Heather Pidgeon, Search Marketing Specialist, iProspect

The company you work for just acquired another company. Or the company you work for was just acquired by another company. Now comes the “fun” stuff: organizational changes, streamlining logistics, consolidating reporting mechanisms, and other difficult challenges. What affect will this acquisition have on your search engine marketing (SEM) initiatives if it means that the two companies have to merge their websites?

To Merge or Not to Merge

Before jumping to the assumption that two sites can be merged, ask yourself, and the other key stakeholders in your SEM campaign, some basic, yet important questions. What are the goals of each website? To generate leads? Sell products/services? What products are sold on each website? Is there any overlap between the products? Or are they totally unrelated? Is the acquired brand going to change or go away? Will that change be represented on the website?

Based on the answers to these questions you can start making decisions about the viability of merging the two websites. If one company sells services for millions of dollars and uses its site to generate leads, and the other sells products for under one hundreds dollars directly from the website, creating a viable, combined site may be an impossible challenge. Or if one site sells bowling balls and the other sells designer clothes, the combination might not make sense. But if there are some products/services or categories of products/services that are common to the two sites, merging them may seem a very natural move.

Merging Sites

If the decision is made to merge the two websites, the first step before changing anything is to gain an understanding of the search engine visibility of each site. Is one site more easily found on keyword phrase searches that are relevant to both sites? If so, the ideal solution is for the content from both sites to be maintained on, and moved to, that website. This will provide you the best chance of maintaining the visibility that’s been established to date. If the content must be moved to the less visible site for branding or other reasons, make sure the proper technical precautions are taken — such as properly redirecting URLs — to transfer as much credibility as possible onto the newly merged site.

Speaking of Credibility

Directory listings, in particular, convey considerable credibility to a website. Take stock of the directory listings pointing to each website. Does the title, description or URL of any of the directory listings need to be updated to reflect the merged website? Are any of the directory listings now duplicated? Request listing updates from the appropriate directories to ensure that the site is getting the most value from these incredibly important links.

The next step to preserve and improve the site’s credibility is to identify important existing links from the most credible external sources and to revise the URLs that the links target. Maybe your company has a link from a leading industry magazine or an expert has positively referenced your company in a credible blog entry. Contact the webmasters of these sites to ask for them to update the link with the URL of your new website.

Rally the Troops

Pull together your internal team and/or your search engine marketing firm and look within the new site to identify areas of improvement that will impact overall search visibility. Update and improve internal linking on the new website. A strong internal strategy improves visibility and thereby increases the size and diversity of your audience. Reaching a larger audience will give you the best opportunity to increase overall revenue.

Don’t Forget Your Competitors

It’s important that while you are merging your websites that you don’t forget who is competing for your potential customers. Don’t stop at the traditional competitors. Dig deeper to see who is competing in the search properties on the most important keyword phrases. You will learn how these competitors are strengthening their visibility and incorporate their good ideas where possible.

Acquisition enables you to capture an opportunity. Use this to your advantage and leverage search visibility in five simple steps:
  1. Ask important questions to determine next steps
  2. Understand visibility — where can both websites currently be found?
  3. Take stock of external factors that influence visibility — directory listings and external links
  4. Rally the troops and improve internal linking opportunities
  5. Don’t lose sight of your competitors to ensure that you continue to capture the opportunity!
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