Buying an existing internet business

[wmrobwl]

I would really like to hear everyone's opinion on this. Lets say someone operates an ecommerce site in a particular industry, lets call it domain.com.

If domain.com decides to purchase a successful, existing business operation, lets call that newdomain.com. What would be the best way to integrate the two domains? Would a 301 redirect from newdomain.com to domain.com really provide you with all of the search engine results that newdomain.com enjoyed?

[cvos]

You want to keep the strongest domain. generally an older site will have more backlinks and better recognition, so this is the best choice.

[hostBrain]

Why integrate them?
Seems to me if the newly acquired website is doing well, why mess with it ?

[wmrobwl]

Why integrate them?
Seems to me if the newly acquired website is doing well, why mess with it ?

So you think the best way to handle it is just keep the two sites separate? This would probably make the most sense since the content is not duplicate and the purchased business' site is doing so well.

Does everyone agree that this is the best thing to do?

[Ne0]

If it's not broke... don't fix it ;)

I'd let them both run unless there's a major reason to merge the two... having a couple of authority sites in one niche can be great :) (if they don't buy from your one site... they'll probably buy from your other site)

.02

[SemAdvance]

Keep em both as noted.

Put them on separate C-class servers and change domain registration information.. and link to each other ...

[kevingibbons]

I would probably redirect them to be honest in order to pass all backlinks to the same domain. It obviously depends on the rankings being achieved by the weaker site and how much search engine traffic this sends, but if you redirect any high ranking pages to similar content on the new site the results should be pretty similar.

It's obviously a risk but I'd expect this to be the best strategy in the long-term and increase the overall rankings for the whole website.