SEO for M&A and Due Diligence

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Buying and selling websites is a hobby of mine, and I’ve been lucky enough to incorporate it in previous roles too (I lead the SEO Due Diligence for a business purchase worth £100m). I support companies looking to grow and diversify through M&A by handling all of the SEO parts of what to purchase, how to migrate it and what needs to happen after.
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How I support with M&A and Due Diligence?

Having had the benefit of being involved in finding, shortlisting, building out acquisition narratives and helping with the purchasing and on-boarding of several online businesses, I help clients through guiding them through the considerations and trade-offs every step of the way.
Sourcing and Shortlisting

Sourcing and Shortlisting

Finding acquisition targets requires good deal flow and a well-defined thesis about what you are after and intend to do with the target. I can support with auditing your current business and making recommendations about what would be a good addition to your portfolio. I can then support in finding and shortlisting candidate businesses based on their SEO performance and ability to grow your SEO.
Strategy and Pricing

Strategy and Pricing

Purchasing online businesses is a mix of art and science, which often results in varied prices depending on who you talk to. I support my clients with building out a comprehensive SEO narrative about the strengths, weaknesses and how the target stacks against the wider market and DIY’ing the growth. This narrative then informs where and how they can negotiate on pricing.
Due Diligence

Due Diligence

As someone who has worked in several industries and across a large number of different types of sites (e.g. ecom, JS SEO, publishing, affiliate), I help clients to meticulously work through the parts and behaviours of websites and their SEO performance. I highlight to clients areas for improvement, where the domain is strong and what things need looking at quickly once acquired as they carry some on-going risk.
Onboarding and future strategy

Onboarding and future strategy

Assuming all goes well, we then begin the work of moving the site over and starting with the strategy to grow and improve the newly acquired business. I can support with both, and typically help my clients with their next steps in terms of strategy and integrating the newly acquired teams and ways of working.

How the Process Works

Step 1

Thesis Development

Before approaching the market, I help brands to review their current business and to figure out where they can look at M&A to strategically grow. As a SEO, I help them to consider the benefits of growing domain authority, improving topical authority and how internal linking can be leveraged to growth SEO performance.
Step 2

Sourcing and Qualifying

With our thesis in hand, we can then approach the market and start courting businesses. I help clients by reverse engineering nearby topics and high authority domains which should be looked at for both their revenue and also SEO impact.
Step 3

Due Diligence

When businesses have been shortlisted, I begin going through all aspects of their SEO performance. I check for manual actions, investigate drops and lifts in SEO visibility and more generally review the SEO practices which have taken place over the years.
Step 4

Strategy development

An often overlooked part of M&A is once bought, then what? I’m a fan of creating a strategy for integrating the business before going too far along the process to confirm upstream issues are not likely, e.g. do your engineers have time to manage the work and/or given resources are finite what should be the immediate focus and why.
Step 5

Site migration

Moving websites carries a significant amount of risk and typically acquisitions with SEO in mind have the goal of consolidating the domain onto another property. I help with all aspects of minimising risk to SEO performance and effectively consolidating the domain, as well as how to install best practices across a site with a whole new section.
Have a question about the process?
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FAQ's

I'm not technical or a SEO, will I understand the report?
All of my reports assume minimal SEO experience and are meant to be accessible regardless of technical know-how. I also provide tickets with all site audits; which are meant to be used by engineers and remove the need for you to have to do it yourself.
How long does an average site audit take?
Whilst it’s true to say bigger and more complex sites typically take longer, an average site audit is done and back with you roughly 6 days after the agreed start date. This may be a little longer than other technical SEO specialists quote you, however the difference is due to the level and thoroughness of the work I am to provide.
What if we struggle with implementing your recommendations?
Firstly, that’s often the case so please do not worry. I am happy to work with you and your teams in whatever way is most conducive to getting the job done. If more calls or little code examples are what is necessary to make it clear, than I’m more than happy to support.
What tools do you use?
I typically use screaming frog for my site crawls with heavily customised config files. I also have a treasure chest of custom scripts I’ve developed to allow for more robust testing of pages. To share an example, I have a script which will test each directory on your website to ensure your URLs are correctly consolidated using redirects.
Are you going to just share low-value things like missing alt attributes or non-SSL internal links?
I do pass on a ‘Low Value Issues’ list which I hope is helpful however I try to focus my time on the recommendations which are going to have the biggest impact. Having worked in-house for more than half my career, I know that engineers and Product managers are expensive and have to pick between several things to work on - so the aim is always to get the best value for you.
How to Contact Me
Drop me an email
hello@tomgregan.co.uk
Book a Meeting
tomgregan.co.uk/calendar
Visit my Contact Page
tomgregan.co.uk/contact