You acquired an existing company and you want a fresh new website. That’s understandable. But that doesn’t mean you should hastily delete the old one.
Check it’s Status
Check to make sure that the site you have inherited does not have any existing Google penalties against it. Additionally, use online tools to see if the existing copy is 100% unique. Duplicate content is a big no-no if you want to rank high in the search results.
301 Redirects
When merging two websites, redirect each article/product to it’s exact match on the new website, instead of simply redirecting all pages to your new homepage. Even though it’s tedious to manually redirect every page to the new page with the same type of content, it is worth it—for both your users and the search engines.
Yes, setting up all of these 301 redirects is time consuming, but easy has never been the path to success, right? Here are some of the benefits you will reap for your time:
- Your new site will get to take advantage of almost all of the old site’s link juice (usually from 90%-99%), which will help preserve the search rankings the old site has earned over the years.
- The 301 redirects will help the search engines find your new pages much faster.
- When a user tries to locate one of the old pages, either through a bookmark or an old link, they will get rerouted to your site instead of receiving a 404 error message.
It’s easy to see why the process of merging two websites correctly is crucial for your new website’s (and business’s) success. But if the process is daunting for your internal marketing team, don’t worry, Zero Gravity Marketing has much experience in merging two websites and we can get the job done with precision.
