Rebranding for Local SEO
-
I'm preparing to begin a rebranding project for a client who is changing their brand name, logo and primary domain name. They have dozens of locations (some that accept walk-in customers, and some that don't).
What's the best place to get started? Once their rebranded website is published, should third-party sources like Acxiom & Localeze be addressed first, then move to Google+ Local, Bing Places, Yahoo Local, etc.? Is using schema for local business and the new company logo on their website a must-do action item?
Just trying to be proactive & figure out the best process in order to maximize cost and time efficiency.
Thank you.
-
Hi Bob,
Yes, I think your suggested order of operations would be fine. You'll have to keep double-checking the Google listing to be sure it isn't reverting to old data or getting duplicated while you work on cleaning up the other citations. Good that you are setting the client's expectations correctly from the get-go. So important. Good luck!
-
Hi Miriam,
The articles you shared are very helpful. Do you think it's best to start with Google & Bing Places first, then move on to the big 4 data aggregators from David Mihm's post?
There's no doubt that this rebranding project will be a big production requiring a lot of time & effort. We have already begun managing the client's expectations on what it will take to make the switch.
Thank you,
Bob
-
Hi Bob,
Andrew Shotland wrote a good piece on this topic a couple of years ago:
http://searchengineland.com/the-smb-guide-to-changing-business-names-seo-128939
Basically, any local business that rebrands itself is in for a mountain of work (hence, Andrew's warning to just not do it!) and as your client has dozens of locations, the amount of work involved is going to be enormous. You are going to need to perform citation cleanup for each of the locations. I would start with the biggies in the local search ecosystem:
http://moz.com/blog/2013-local-search-ecosystems
Once you've tackled the big 4 outlined there, move on to cleanup all other citations. At the very least, you have some months of work ahead of you, and hopefully your client understands this. Rebranding is definitely a huge task, and it will only be when you've corrected every single listing for all of the dozens of locations that you can begin to feel like you're back on the safe side - letting the new data pulse through the ecosystem rather than being hampered by the bad data that will necessarily be everywhere the moment the business rebrands. Good luck!
-
Thank you for the feedback, SoleGraphics.
My concern with updating their Google Places listings first is that Google often changes company names after verification, when they see other data sources using their other names. Since this is a new brand name being adopted, and with it taking several months for the data to propagate out, do you still believe Google Places is the best place to start?
-
Moz has tons of info on local SEO, https://getlisted.org/ is a good place to start. Also this whole rebrand may take 6 months before all the listings are up to date and all the data with the aggregators is cleaned up.
I'd say Google Places would be your best bet to start with, because of the immediate results and then start cleaning up everything else.
As for schema we use it in or website and it hasn't correlated closely to rankings. Google webmaster tools shows the schema snippets but doesn't say that they use it.
Domain name changes will rock your clients results like crazy, make sure to read up what the best way to handle a new domain as to avoid losing any juice.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
A website for China - SEO & Marketing
I want to launch a website in China and have read that the best way forward for Baidu SEO is to host the site in China itself - does anyone have experience with doing that? It seems there are a few hoops to jump through, but I imagine I'm not the first to try?
Branding | | jo910 -
What is the best SEO friendly way to combine two websites.
I have two websites, eg: widgets.com - sells expensive widgets as gifts everydaywidgets.com - sells cheap widgets for everyday use. I would like to combine them both under the widgets.com domain name, because its easier to run the SEO campaign for one rather than two. But i still want two different product collections, and two different sites. widgets.com is by far the larger of the two sites so my current thought is to have that the main landing site, and have a button at the top to take the user to widgets.com/everydaywidgets where they have a similar but different site, and different products. I can set this all up no problem with the correct 301 redirects from everydaywidgets.com, but is it SEO friendly? Does anyone know of a real world example of a business doing this? Cheers
Branding | | SEOhmygod0 -
Changing domain name and site design while recovering from penguin? Still SEO power in EMDs?
Our website recently suffered from a penguin update courtesy of some black hat techniques used by an SEO company we hired a few years ago. We are working on cleaning up and disavowing the old spammy links, but at the same time this penalty has hit us while we were working on making some major changes to our website. As a law firm we have 2 separate practice websites we are planning to merge under 1 domain to help boost our local results. Our problem is that the domain names for each practice are specific to the type of law they practice, so we will have to move both practices to a branded name domain that works for both practices. I thought since traffic was already affected because of the penguin update this might be an opportune time to change the domain name, but since I am far from an expert at SEO I'm wondering if there are variables I am unaware of that might make this decision a very bad one. Also we currently have exact match domains for our two different sites -- the way I understand it EMDs don't carry the same SEO weight they once did, but the firm is worried that losing the EMDs is going to cause a dramatic drop in traffic. If we keep the EMDs but permanently redirect them to the new site, will it maintain their SEO value? Would google consider that black hat and possibly penalize us for it in the future? Thanks for any advice or insight!!
Branding | | MyOwnSEO0 -
Do Dashes in Domain names hurt SEO ranking?
I have found conflicting reports online whether or not dashes in domain names hurt/help ranking. Example yourbrandonline.com vs your-brand-online.com? I found Rand's write up on how to select a domain and he suggests staying away from hyphens but mainly because its hard to remember or people my enter it in wrong. Here's his comment. "Reject Hyphens and Numbers
Branding | | JoshKimber
Both hyphens and numbers make it hard to give your domain name verbally and falls down on being easy to remember or type. I'd suggest not using spelled-out or roman numerals in domains, as both can be confusing and mistaken for the other." Aside from people possibly struggling to get there directly because of the domain name, are they OK to use? Or, are domains with hyphens considered spammy? Thanks in advance.1 -
What can i do to regain top 3 for local map listings if I already created a bunch of citation link to my site?
I got hit by a penguin refresh on Oct 5th and lost over 10 #1 rankings. I'm currently #4 on the places listing for my main keyword and really trying to regain top 3 position. I created a bunch of local citation with matching info and really piped out my map listing since it is 100% complete. I'm quite stumped on how to further optimize my map listing to where i can hit top 3 positions. Does anyone have any recommendations on this issue? Thanks Sam
Branding | | junkcars0 -
Infographic for SEO
How can an infographic be used for seo purposes? What tools should I use to create one or should I just outsource the work? How much does an infographic cost to make?
Branding | | bronxpad0 -
What do i do with multiple cheap domain names I want to use for SEO?
My domain registrar was having a sale for 1$ per year .com domain names (just for the first year). So I went all out and bought 16 domain names. They pretty much all are two or more keywords that i'd like to rank high on put together. We do dedicated server monitoring, so for instance I bought apachemonitoring.com and haproxymoniotring.com. Can anyone tell me what the best way would be to put these to good use technically? Options: Each domain just 301's to a specific landing page on my main company website Each domain is a site on a drupal multisite with just one page that has links to just my company website Other ideas? Thanks in advance! Walter
Branding | | walterheck0 -
What tools do you use to submit a site to local yellowpages?
Hey all, two part question for you. Do you use any tools to automatically submit websites to local yellowpages (example: http://business.intuit.com/directory/marketing/100_syndication_sites.jsp)? and if so, what one and why? Are there any dangers to doing it this way? It seems that this might save a lot of time and be incredibly helpful to manage your brand profile pages in a centralized location. Also some tools that I am seeing incorporate brand monitoring (which you can do through a variety of tools I know). Anyways, thoughts? comments? tips?
Branding | | prima-2535090