Overstock’s Mattress Tub & Past rebrand: The website positioning affect

Overstock relaunched as Mattress Tub & Past on Aug. 1. Many SEO professionals have been important of the transfer because the group has begun analyzing early knowledge. 

The first criticism is that overstock.com didn’t cleanly 301 redirect all URLs to an equal counterpart on bedbathandbeyond.com. Hundreds of URLs haven’t been redirected, and plenty of extra have been blanketly redirected to the bedbathandbeyond.com homepage. 

There are a number of causes this may need occurred. 

• The Overstock workforce decided that sure URLs didn’t comprise sufficient worth to burden with a redirect.
• There might have been enterprise causes for not making the connection, akin to decreasing the variety of merchandise bought on the location.
• The preliminary merger was the MVP (minimal viable product) and the migration will probably be launched in phases.

Why the merger was huge website positioning information

Overstock was based in 1999 as a digital-only procuring vacation spot that supplied shoppers offers on liquidated stock. During the last 20 years, they’ve advanced right into a procuring vacation spot spanning a number of classes.

Everybody is aware of Mattress Tub & Past (BB&B) as the shop that mails out a blue and white postcard with a reduction. The shop was based in 1971 as a fixture in strip malls and suburban areas. Because the title implies, the shop focuses on dwelling items, primarily within the mattress, tub and kitchen classes. 

These two shops have been powerhouses on-line for a lot of the final 20 years. Their visitors ranges have been important amongst on-line retailers, making the merger such a giant deal for search entrepreneurs. 

Overstock’s natural visitors peaked in the course of the pandemic when everybody was compelled to buy on-line. Nonetheless, they couldn’t maintain their development, shedding market share to Amazon and different on-line retailers.

Mattress Tub & Past’s natural visitors peaked previous to the pandemic however by no means recovered post-pandemic.

Site visitors is rising, however nonetheless beneath pre-bankruptcy ranges

Over three weeks after the migration, the preliminary outcomes have been OK. That mentioned, natural visitors has but to rebound to pre-Overstock ranges, in keeping with Ahrefs.

It isn’t anticipated that BB&B’s web site will attain pre-bankruptcy visitors and take up Overstock’s natural visitors. 

A lot of bedbathandbeyond.com’s natural visitors previous to the chapter was prospects in search of coveted blue coupons, procuring on-line for retailer pickup, or merchandise after which procuring in-store. 

It’s protected to imagine that BB&B can rise above their pre-bankruptcy natural visitors ranges with the mixed websites’ natural visitors however beneath the mixture visitors totals of overstock.com and bedbathandbeyond.com. 

Why gained’t BB&B attain the mixture visitors totals of the 2 websites? 

Partially for the explanations above (primarily procuring on-line and in-store pickup and other people trying to store in-store) and in addition attributable to product and different web page overlap. 

Most of the classes are the identical and will probably be consolidated on BB&B. There are doubtless hundreds of merchandise which might be the identical, during which case these pages will probably be consolidated. 

Attributable to these variables, visitors will probably be lower than the earlier sum of each websites. Nonetheless, over time, BB&B can earn incremental visitors throughout pages that cater to prospects in every stage of their procuring journey.

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The place does Mattress Tub & Past go from right here?

Listed below are some extra steps that bedbathandbeyond.com can take to spice up its natural visitors. 

• Concentrate on class web page efficiency, which has declined since bedbathandbeyond.com declared chapter.
  • To counter this decline, the corporate ought to give attention to bettering the content material associated to its merchandise on these class pages. 
  • By updating and enhancing the knowledge on these pages, the corporate can work to regain its misplaced search engine rankings.

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• Assuming the migration is accomplished in steps, URLs redirected to the homepage needs to be redirected to the closest counterpart on bedbathandbeyond.com.
• To capitalize on the current enchancment in search engine rankings, the corporate may create particular person pages on the brand new BB&B web site that correspond on to the content material from the outdated web site. This implies there needs to be a devoted new web page on bedbathandbeyond.com for every bit of content material that was moved.
• Cease the bleeding on deeper pages that comprise key phrases that are now not rating because the migration.

• Decide if the inflow of recent pages has compromised the inner linking construction. Create an inner linking map to make sure that precedence pages stay the precedence and that hyperlink fairness is being unfold all through the location.
• Evaluate crawl logs to find out if any web site sections are having points being crawled and accessed.

Dig deeper: How to complete a website shutdown with a split migration

How we might have migrated Overstock to BB&B

Migrations are troublesome and complicated, particularly when merging and/or transferring onto a brand new platform. Quite a bit should occur in the correct sequence to make sure the location capabilities as anticipated throughout launch. 

When pondering of a migration from an website positioning perspective, the principle goal is matching pages (outdated to new) in order that they go their worth onto the brand new pages. Whereas this sounds easy, there are a variety of steps that have to be deliberate and executed.

Listed below are the steps we might take at our company to make sure that all angles are being thought-about and that the outdated web site is ready to go worth onto the brand new pages:

• Evaluate content material on templated pages (e.g., product, class pages) and different content material contained in purchaser’s guides, blogs, how-to articles, and so forth.
• Evaluate visitors knowledge to find out which content material needs to be saved on the brand new model of the location and which content material may be retired.
• As soon as URL construction is known on the brand new web site, create a URL map that particulars redirects wanted (e.g., single web page degree or listing degree redirects).
• Create guidelines for programmatic replace of inner hyperlinks.
• Create canonical tag logic for the brand new pages on the brand new web site.
• Replace href-lang hyperlinks to pages on the brand new web site.
• Create XML sitemap technique and QA as soon as carried out.
• Evaluate the location from a technical perspective in a sandbox atmosphere to make sure that the location has no main points and structured knowledge is included on key pages.
• Guarantee web site pace is addressed for each cellular and desktop.
• Replace robots.txt file. Record any new XML sitemaps and take away all outdated references to the outdated web site.
• Validate all adjustments previous to going reside within the sandbox atmosphere.
• Conduct post-migration steps, hotfix necessary points, and add less-important points to the dev backlog.

With most migrations, there will probably be some hiccups even when all of the steps are adopted. 

It could possibly be a difficulty with knowledge migration, incorrect canonical logic, or a directive within the robots.txt file that blocks the location from being crawled. 

As an website positioning, you want to discover and repair points shortly. Product and growth groups have to be aligned to deal with these hotfixes shortly. 

Exploring the website positioning affect of Overstock and Mattress Tub & Past’s web site merger

So, has it been an ideal migration? Not fairly. However it’s additionally not as dangerous as some SEOs have been initially reporting. 

Natural visitors is rising, the variety of key phrases rating is rising, and the BB&B workforce is studying extra concerning the web site day by day. 

There are clear development alternatives that the website positioning and content material groups can undertake. Including content material over time to precedence class and subcategory pages could be among the many most impactful duties the BB&B workforce can deal with. 

Additionally, a give attention to inner linking and guaranteeing the complete web site is crawlable and indexable. 

The core focus have to be getting individuals snug procuring on the brand new BB&B web site. In time, visitors will develop organically if the model reestablishes itself as a pacesetter in purchasing for dwelling items. W

hile these two mixed powerhouses have the potential to eat market share, there are nonetheless many dangers within the area – giants like Amazon and smaller corporations – as DTC companies proceed to develop in recognition attributable to their capacity to adapt to market wants.

The submit Overstock’s Bed Bath & Beyond rebrand: The SEO impact appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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