Overstock’s Mattress Tub & Past rebrand: The search engine optimisation affect

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

The first grievance is that overstock.com didn’t cleanly 301 redirect all URLs to an equal counterpart on bedbathandbeyond.com. 1000’s 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 staff decided that sure URLs didn’t include sufficient worth to burden with a redirect.
• There might have been enterprise causes for not making the connection, resembling lowering the variety of merchandise offered on the location.
• The preliminary merger was the MVP (minimal viable product) and the migration will likely be launched in phases.

Why the merger was massive search engine optimisation information

Overstock was based in 1999 as a digital-only buying vacation spot that provided shoppers offers on liquidated stock. Over the past 20 years, they’ve developed right into a buying 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 identify implies, the shop makes a speciality of house 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 through the pandemic when everybody was compelled to buy on-line. Nonetheless, they couldn’t maintain their progress, dropping 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 under pre-bankruptcy ranges

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

It’s not 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, buying on-line for retailer pickup, or merchandise after which buying in-store. 

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

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

Partially for the explanations above (primarily buying on-line and in-store pickup and other people seeking to store in-store) and in addition as a consequence of product and different web page overlap. 

Most of the classes are the identical and will likely be consolidated on BB&B. There are possible 1000’s of merchandise which are the identical, through which case these pages will likely be consolidated. 

Resulting from these variables, visitors will likely 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 buying journey.

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

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

• Give attention to class web page efficiency, which has declined since bedbathandbeyond.com declared chapter.
  • To counter this decline, the corporate ought to concentrate on bettering the content material associated to its merchandise on these class pages. 
  • By updating and enhancing the data 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 latest 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 previous web site. This implies there needs to be a devoted new web page on bedbathandbeyond.com for each bit of content material that was moved.
• Cease the bleeding on deeper pages that include key phrases that are not rating for the reason that migration.

• Decide if the inflow of latest pages has compromised the inner linking construction. Create an inside 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 website sections are having points being crawled and accessed.

Dig deeper: Easy methods to full a web site shutdown with a break up migration

How we might have migrated Overstock to BB&B

Migrations are troublesome and sophisticated, particularly when merging and/or transferring onto a brand new platform. So much should occur in the appropriate sequence to make sure the location capabilities as anticipated throughout launch. 

When considering of a migration from an search engine optimisation perspective, the primary goal is matching pages (previous to new) in order that they cross 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 here are the steps we might take at our company to make sure that all angles are being thought of and that the previous website is ready to cross 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 stored on the brand new model of the location and which content material will be retired.
• As soon as URL construction is known on the brand new website, create a URL map that particulars redirects wanted (e.g., single web page stage or listing stage redirects).
• Create guidelines for programmatic replace of inside hyperlinks.
• Create canonical tag logic for the brand new pages on the brand new website.
• Replace href-lang hyperlinks to pages on the brand new website.
• Create XML sitemap technique and QA as soon as applied.
• Evaluate the location from a technical viewpoint in a sandbox surroundings to make sure that the location has no main points and structured knowledge is included on key pages.
• Guarantee website pace is addressed for each cell and desktop.
• Replace robots.txt file. Listing any new XML sitemaps and take away all previous references to the previous website.
• Validate all modifications previous to going stay within the sandbox surroundings.
• Conduct post-migration steps, hotfix vital points, and add less-important points to the dev backlog.

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

It may very well 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 search engine optimisation, it’s worthwhile to discover and repair points shortly. Product and growth groups have to be aligned to deal with these hotfixes shortly. 

Exploring the search engine optimisation affect of Overstock and Mattress Tub & Past’s web site merger

So, has it been an ideal migration? Not fairly. But it surely’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 staff is studying extra in regards to the website each day. 

There are clear progress alternatives that the search engine optimisation 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 staff can deal with. 

Additionally, a concentrate on inside linking and guaranteeing all the website is crawlable and indexable. 

The core focus have to be getting individuals snug buying on the brand new BB&B website. In time, visitors will develop organically if the model reestablishes itself as a frontrunner in purchasing for house 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 reputation as a consequence of their potential to adapt to market wants.