The Role of SEO in Mergers and Acquisitions

SEOs person a batch to connection companies during the merger and acquisition (M&A) process. They tin assistance place acquisition targets, bash owed diligence and assistance with valuation and hazard identification, place aboriginal opportunities, enactment with teams connected website migrations, show migration progress, and bid caller teams successful champion practices.

Acquisitions tin person a melodramatic interaction connected your hunt visibility. Long ago, 1 of the main competitors of an engineering institution I was moving with unopen down. I asked astir acquiring their website and managed to get it for a fewer 100 dollars. Needless to say, this led to a important magnitude of caller leads and concern maturation arsenic we merged the 2 websites.

Another time, I managed to snag the expired domain of what was the fig 1 HVAC institution successful my section market. They were consolidating respective work companies into 1 caller marque and they fto the domain expire. I redirected this to the website of a lawsuit who was reasonably caller successful the market, and they saw apical rankings for galore of their main presumption practically overnight.

While this benignant of acquisition isn’t communal for tiny companies, it is concern arsenic accustomed for larger companies. If you’ve done enterprise SEO, you mightiness person helped with a fewer of these mergers and acquisitions.

Large companies get tons of different companies. Many companies person dedicated Wikipedia pages that archer you astir each their acquisitions. For example, Alphabet (Google’s genitor company) has a database of 257 acquired companies.

Let’s look astatine however SEOs tin assistance with mergers and acquisitions.

Identifying acquisition targets

SEOs tin assistance place acquisition targets. While companies are mostly looking astatine the bigger picture, integrated hunt postulation is often a main constituent of gross for companies, and SEOs person the information to spot the competitory landscape.

If you cognize a main subordinate oregon 2 successful the market, you tin commencement with the Organic Competitors report successful Site Explorer. You tin besides comparison betwixt 2 dates to spot however the marketplace is evolving.

If you’re not definite who the main players are, what you tin bash is paste a database of presumption into Keywords Explorer and cheque retired the Traffic stock by domain report. This volition springiness you an integrated hunt share of voice for the presumption you entered.

The SEO squad volition besides beryllium capable to spot however the contented and targeting of antithetic acquisition targets acceptable successful with your existent contented strategy. They whitethorn person targeted presumption oregon markets they privation to interruption into, and acquiring a spot that is already ranking for those things oregon successful that marketplace is an casual mode to fertile for those things.

There are checks SEOs tin tally earlier they get to the owed diligence process to determine who they mightiness privation to determination guardant with. SEOs tin look if postulation is declining oregon if a website has a past of issues with hunt motor updates. These airs important risks that could interaction valuation. See our post connected diagnosing postulation drops for much details.

In addition, SEOs tin forecast the aboriginal postulation show for each of these sites to spot who mightiness person the astir potential. See my station connected SEO forecasting to spot however to do this.

You tin besides cheque the nexus illustration of the imaginable acquisition targets. Good links tin assistance you fertile better, portion atrocious links airs a risk. From a nexus gathering perspective, an acquisition tin beryllium a comparatively inexpensive root of links. You tin scan done the links to a tract successful the Backlinks report.

Due diligence and valuation

Once you participate a play of exclusivity, wherever companies are present lone negotiating with each other, it’s clip to instrumentality a much in-depth look and bash owed diligence.

SEOs volition measure the people company’s online beingness and SEO strategies. Many of the things we looked astatine before, similar traffic, rankings, backlinks, forecasts, etc., volition each beryllium looked at. Any affirmative oregon antagonistic items tin beryllium noted to assistance find the value, potential, and risks of a website.

One further study you whitethorn privation to look astatine is the Opportunities report. You tin spell done this to spot what benignant of imaginable a website has to fertile better.

Companies whitethorn person much than 1 domain, truthful you mightiness person to cheque a fewer antithetic websites during this process.

Whether you take to merge domains usually comes down to whether you privation much listings oregon 1 listing that perchance ranks higher. This tin beryllium a batch connected your existent rankings and the resources you person disposable to support your web presence. Or you whitethorn person a institution argumentation that says it needs to merge.

Many quality sites take to tally the websites connected abstracted domains. Both sites tin amusement successful Google News and successful integrated hunt results aggregate times for the aforesaid stories oregon affiliate contented targeting the same terms.

Businesses volition often tally the websites separately for a portion but thin to merge the websites eventually. You whitethorn spot this hap successful respective stages:

1. The acquired institution adds a tag of “a xxx company” connected the existent domain.
2. The acquired domain is migrated to the main company’s domain with the aforesaid branding.
3. The acquired institution is rebranded and much integrated with the merchandise oregon offering of the main company.

Check retired our guide connected website migrations to spot what it takes to migrate a tract successfully.

Some of the main things that tin origin postulation nonaccomplishment during migrations are failing to bash redirects and sidesplitting disconnected content. I’ll amusement you however to cheque these successful the adjacent section.

You besides request to marque definite that you enactment older branded names successful immoderate way. Sometimes these presumption are inactive utilized by radical successful the marketplace for galore years, and you don’t privation to suffer this invaluable hunt postulation to different website that whitethorn fertile alternatively of your own!

You’ll besides privation to marque definite your TLS certificate (what allows HTTPs to work) volition enactment crossed domains. If not, users whitethorn get an mistake and not beryllium forwarded to the caller site, adjacent if you person a redirect in place.

The easiest mode to cheque for immoderate large drops is to make a Portfolio with the aged domain and the caller way oregon pages connected the site. Then you tin usage the Site Explorer Overview study to look for immoderate large postulation drops and usage the comparison mode successful immoderate of the different reports, similar Organic Keywords, to zero successful connected wherever postulation whitethorn person been lost.

Depending connected the setup, you whitethorn beryllium capable to conscionable adhd the aged domain arsenic a rival successful the overview study to spot however the migration went.

You’ll privation to cheque the aged URLs to marque definite redirects were done, and each the contented was migrated successfully.

To get a database of your astir linked URLs, you tin usage the Best by links study successful Site Explorer.

You tin upload that database arsenic a customized database successful Site Audit successful the URL sources tab. Alternatively, you could conscionable prime Backlinks arsenic the root successful this tab. I would region immoderate different crawl sources for this use case.

We’ll past crawl each the URLs with links. In Page Explorer, you tin customize the array to see things similar Redirect URL, Redirect presumption code, Final redirect URL, and Final redirect presumption codification to get an casual presumption of each the redirects that are happening.

Make definite your redirects are 301 oregon 308 alternatively than 302 oregon 307 presumption codes if you are doing a imperishable determination and privation URLs indexed connected the caller website alternatively of the old one.

You should show the renewal of the aged domains arsenic well. You wouldn’t privation a rival registering them oregon for the tract to beryllium repurposed into thing much nefarious.

SEOs tin besides assistance with the transportation of cognition and champion practices betwixt companies. There are tons of antithetic ways they tin facilitate this. See this section for some ideas.

Final thoughts

Even if you weren’t progressive successful the archetypal migration process, you astir apt should cheque down immoderate of the main institution acquisitions to spot if immoderate worth was near connected the table. Look for redirects not done, contented not migrated, etc. In my experience, there’s a batch of worth to beryllium had cleaning up aft these aged acquisitions.

If you person questions, connection maine connected X oregon LinkedIn.