Acquisition of new company

SEO implications of having multiple sites

[Pendyala]

A newbie to Domain names, our client has recently acquired a company, the issue is will there be any benefits of keeping multiple site, or merge all features from both sites into one domain. what wil be the possible benefits of maintaining seperate sites,( apart from cross linking).

Any advice/help appreciated!

Thanks in advance
Pendyala

[cshel]

If the new site has a similar theme to your existing site, or sells the same types of products, I think it would be best to 301 the newly acquired site to your existing site.

If the sites are kept separate just for cross-linking purposes, it might look like you're trying to artificially increase your backlinks -- and that would hurt rather than help.

[Pendyala]

Cshel,

The new site hasn't got the same theme, though broadly both the sites belong to similar category, they differ thematically. And one more thing I forgot to mention is that the acquired site has got very good PR, will it be good in this case to use 301.

If both sites have got different themes, how will cross linking affect adversly

Thanks
Pendyala

[cshel]

I believe that if the search engines figure out that a single entity owns both of the sites (they do have the capacity to make those connections), they don't give the cross-linked backlinks nearly as much weight as natural "real" backlinks.

Is there a reason you want to keep the domains separate?

I bought a competitor's domain after they went out of business (but still have hundreds of backlinks and several very nice directory listings) and I 301'd the domain to my site.

The content was never identical, but we were competing in the same market with a vaguely similar theme. So by 301ing the traffic to my site, I've absorbed all of those backlinks, and all the backlink credit and traffic is applied to a single site, rather than divided between two.

I think it makes sense to have a single stronger site, rather than two weaker sites competing for attention -- even if they are cross-linking between each other.

[Pendyala]

Thanks for your suggestion, I would recommend the merger using 301