Purchasing competitor's website

[A Party Shop]

We have the opportunity to purchase a two of our competitor's websites that we'd like to run alongside our current one.

One specialises in the wedding market. We don't currently offer a huge product range in this niche and so would like to link to this newly aquired site from our current relevent wedding pages.

I'm probably "over-worrying" but with Google changes over the last few years, would there be any downside for either new or existing site being linked this way?

Any thoughts/opinion would be very welcome.

 

[JonathanSEO]

There will be no problems with Google in doing what your suggesting.

The only way it could possibly go wrong is if you over link to to it with over optimised anchors. Even then it's unlikely.

 

[Bryan_Centurica]

What you may want to do here is make sure to keep the sites on separate web hosting accounts, as this way you won't lose the SEO juice that your site will provide to the newly acquired one. If you host the sites out of the same hosting account then there will be no SEO benefit as Google will know that both sites are yours.

 

[A Party Shop]

@Bryan_Centurica

What I'm trying to understand is, what is the problem with Google knowing that two sites belong to the same person? Surely it would be a completely innocent, natural and customer focused thing for a business to do, link their sites together.

So, you're suggesting that Google frowns upon this kind of honesty and we should be concealing it in some way?

 

[Bryan_Centurica]

No, not at all suggesting that. There's nothing wrong with you owning more than one site.

The only reason why I suggested keeping the sites in separate hosting accounts is that you would then benefit from the fact that one site links to another and it would potentially help the other site climb in rankings.

The difference is likely minimal, though, so it may not even be worth the effort.

 

[Tim R-T-C]

The only reason why I suggested keeping the sites in separate hosting accounts is that you would then benefit from the fact that one site links to another and it would potentially help the other site climb in rankings.

The difference is likely minimal, though, so it may not even be worth the effort.

One quality link is likely to prove a little help, but probably not worth the effort and expense of running on two separate hosting accounts.

 

[JonathanSEO]

What you may want to do here is make sure to keep the sites on separate web hosting accounts, as this way you won't lose the SEO juice that your site will provide to the newly acquired one. If you host the sites out of the same hosting account then there will be no SEO benefit as Google will know that both sites are yours.

That isn't true. Different C Class Ip's is such a myth and an entire hosting industry is built off the back of it. Unless you have a crazy amount of sites it's not necessary.

Host them on the same hosting account and link between them freely because it makes sense to do so.