Two Websites After Buying a Competitor

Two of everything

The purchase closed last month. You now own a competitor's trucks, customer files and staff, and with them a second website, domain, phone number and set of map listings.

Its customers still search for its name. Some keep its number on the fridge or on a sticker, and its site still turns up in searches it took years to earn.

Nobody has planned what happens to any of that. The bought site still says the old owner will call you back.

What the bought business still carries

A business's presence online is built slowly, and part of what a purchase pays for sits in it. Its name is what people type, and its pages are what search engines already know.

Other sites link to it: suppliers' dealer lists, an association directory, a local paper's story from years ago. Each link points at an address that works only while that domain does.

Its phone number is printed on invoices, vehicles and years of paperwork in customers' drawers. Those numbers keep ringing long after the sign comes down.

Merge the names or keep both

The first decision is not technical. Either the bought name continues as a brand of its own, or it folds into yours, and everything else follows from that choice.

• Keep both when the two serve different customers, areas or price levels, and the bought name has a following of its own.
• Merge when the services overlap and two names would only confuse customers and staff.
• Merge gradually when the bought name is well known: a line saying it is now part of your business, then a full change later.
• Set a date for each step, so the website, listings, vehicles and paperwork change together.

The gradual route suits many small purchases. Customers learn the new name from a familiar one, rather than finding a stranger where they expected an old supplier.

Every login, from the seller

A website is several separate accounts: the domain registration, the hosting, the email, the map listing, the social pages and the phone service. Each one has to move into your control.

Ask the seller for all of them, and change the registrant of the domain to your company. A domain left in the old owner's name can lapse, or leave with the seller.

If the purchase agreement does not list these items, ask your lawyer how they should be transferred. These are general points about websites, not legal advice on the terms of your sale.

Redirecting page by page

If the names merge, the bought site should not simply vanish or send every visitor to your home page. Each old page should lead to the page on your site that answers the same question.

A permanent redirect, known by its code 301, does that. It also tells search engines the move is lasting, so they carry the old page's standing over to its replacement.

List every old address in a spreadsheet with its new destination beside it. Old service pages go to your matching service pages, and the old contact page to yours.

Then keep the old domain registered and renewing for years. The redirects work only while the domain does.

A worked example

An industrial door installer in Surrey fits and services overhead doors, loading dock equipment and high-speed doors for warehouses and plants. This spring it bought a smaller rival in Abbotsford whose owner was retiring.

Every door either company had serviced carried a sticker with its phone number. Maintenance managers call that number when a door jams, sometimes years after the last visit.

The owners chose to merge the names over a year. The rival's site gained a line saying it was now part of the Surrey company, and its number moved onto the new office's phone system.

Its pages were then mapped one by one: loading dock pages to the matching service pages, and the old contact page to a new page for the Abbotsford branch.

The old domain was transferred and set to renew for five years. Its map listing took the new name once the new sign went up on the Abbotsford shop, and kept its reviews.

The old number still rings, now at a desk that answers with both names. The stickers can stay on the doors for as long as they last.

Every listing, everywhere

List every place the bought business appears: the map listing, directories, review sites, supplier and association pages, and the social pages it ran.

Where the location stays open, update the name, phone and website to match the sign on the door. Where it closes, mark the listing closed rather than leaving a number nobody answers.

Two listings for one business at one address confuse searchers and go against Google's guidelines, so do not keep both alive out of habit.

Keep the old number answering

A phone number that stops working tells a caller the business has gone. A cancelled number can later be given to someone else entirely.

Move it to your own phone service and have it answered with a greeting that names both businesses. Keep it for as long as people still call it.

Do the same with the old email addresses. Forward them to a mailbox someone reads, with an automatic reply that gives the new address.

The counter-case

Some purchases bring almost nothing online: a one-page site, no listings of note, a number that rarely rings. There, the merge is a redirect and an afternoon's work.

Others keep the bought name for good, because its reputation is the point of the purchase. Then the work is coordination rather than redirects, with a clear link between the two sites.

Either way, the domain and the phone number deserve the same care. Both are easier to keep than to win back once lost.

The first month after closing

1. Decide whether the names merge, stay apart or change gradually.
2. Collect every login from the seller.
3. Transfer the domain into your company's name.
4. Map every old page to a matching page of yours.
5. Add the redirects and test each one.
6. Update or close every listing.
7. Keep the old number and email addresses answering.

Step two decides how hard the rest will be. A domain or listing that only the seller can reach turns every later change into a request and a wait.

Who owns a shared site and its domain, and what happens when one of the people sharing it leaves, is the question behind one website shared by several independent professionals.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.