Is buying my competitor's site like buying links?

[arthur22]

I've been offered the chance to buy one of my competitor's sites. My own site was badly pandalized and I am trying to be super squeaky clean, so...

Is it OK to just buy a competing site, put all of their content onto my main site, and 301 the competing site to my site? Part of me thinks, "Well, of course it MUST be OK, it's just mergers and acquisitions."

Another paranoid part thinks, "Aren't you mainly buying the backlinks? Isn't that paid links by any other name?"

And I would be mailing in it for the backlinks - the site is small (less than 50 pages) and has some decent content but nothing earth-shattering. Been around a long long time though so dome good links.

Anyone done this? Is it legit?

[netmeg]

One of my clients has bought two of his competitors, and we basically transferred the content we didn't already have, and 301'd everything. No problems so far.

[tedster]

I've helped a site with two such business acquisitions. We just took good care of the regular users we gained from the purchased business, and there was no problem.

[ken_b]

If the new site hasn't been hit by Panda and the old site has, wouldn't it be better to run the two sites separately?

[netmeg]

Depends on if the content you're 301'd to is good stuff, I would imagine.

[Marketing Guy]

Depending on the size of both it might be worth cherry picking the best content from the two and consoldidating on the old one as part of a Panda fix.

[arthur22]

My site gets far more traffic and has far more content than the old site, and I'm very attached to my current domain name/brand, so I don't want to use the old domain. Technically that might work as a Panda fix (although it really shouldn't, seeing as though 90% of the content would remain the same) but I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

Running two sites on the same topic - and they are on EXACTLY the same topic - seems a little dangerous these days. The advice I have read is that two or more sites on the same topic looks like a serp domination attempt, and is not advisable.