Is re-branding safe?
-
I am not entirely pleased with my website's name and have been willing to change it for years. I feel it is not brand-able.
But since its an old domain name and overall figures of DA, PR, Moz score etc. are very good, I have been wary of changing the name and doing a 301 permanent re-direct from the existing name to the new one.
Please suggest me if I should go for it. If yes, what are the best practices to go about it.
-
Hi there
A rebrand is a business decision. I would take advantage of all the information from Umar as well as a few more points for good measure:
Content Audit - Find what current content can be updated, consolidated, removed, and migrated to the new website. What other opportunities do you have for your content?
Website Migration Guide from Moz - This will help make sure that your transition to the new website will go smooth and cover your bases.
Backlink Audit - This will help you on a couple of fronts. First, you will find backlinks that you will want to update to the new domain once it is live and ready to go. Second, you will find links that you can either remove or disavow so that when you redirect, it won't be a factor.
Change of Address - You will want to use this so that Google knows your site moved to a new address. Google also has a resource for when you move a website.
Local SEO - If you have listings or citations, make sure those are updated. Perform an audit so you can make sure that any mention of your business is corrected and now points to a new domain.There are a lot of opportunities in rebranding, but you want to make sure that you take care of everything that you can to help users and search engines see that your site has moved and you are now a new brand.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
-
Hey,
If you feel your brand can not related to your site, you should go for the re-branding. Just Keep in the mind that, your traffic and ranking might suffer a drop and you have to keep patience in whole process. Here are the things you should work on:
- Perform a full SEO audit
- Plan a perfect redirection plan
- Update your business information at every place
- Issue a press release stating your re-branding news
- Update your social media profiles and handles (Obviously, you don't want to loose your followers)
- Spread the word via blogging.
- Inform your existing customers through newsletters and even phone call if necessary.
See these resources for reference:
https://moz.com/ugc/overcoming-a-rebrand-seo-search-engine-opportunities
http://www.mightybytes.com/blog/will-rebranding-hurt-seo/Good luck!
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
-
Website using search term as URL brand name to cheat Google
Google has come a long way over the past 5 years, the quality updates have really helped bring top quality content to the top that is relevant for users search terms, although there is one really ANNOYING thing that still has not been fixed. Websites using brand name as service search term to manipulate Google I have got a real example but I wouldn't like to use it in case the brand mentions flags up in their tools and they spot this post, but take this search for example "Service+Location" You will get 'service+location.com' rank #1 Why? Heaven knows. They have less than 100 backlinks which are of a very low, spammy quality from directories. The content is poor compared to the competition and the competitors have amazing link profiles, great social engagement, much better website user experience and the data does not prove anything. All the competitors are targeting the same search term but yet the worst site is ranking the highest. Why on earth is Google not fixing this issue. This page we are seeing rank #1 do not even deserve to be ranking on the first 5 pages.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jseddon920 -
Branding and Page Titles - Please Help
Hello, I have a question about page titles. How important is branding here? I'm not referring to the company name, but rather the terminology that's used as "branding language" for a company. For example, let's say that the it would be a good idea to target the keyword "Restaurant Coupons" based on search volume and competition. However, our branding adheres to the language "Dining Offers". Is it considered a bad idea to use "Restaurant Coupons" in the page title? Or is that considered inconsistent branding? Basically, I'm just trying to figure out the correct balance between the SEO value of words and adhering to a company's branding. Any help is appreciated! Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | atmosol
Nick1 -
URL Re-Writes & HTTPS: Link juice loss from 301s?
Our URLs are not following a lot of the best practices found here: http://moz.com/blog/11-best-practices-for-urls We have also been waiting to implement HTTPS. I think it might be time to take the plunge on re-writing the URLs and converting to a fully secure site, but I am concerned about ranking dips from the lost link juice from the 301s. Many of our URLs are very old, with a decent amount of quality links. Are we better off leaving as is or taking the plunge?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheDude0 -
Will I lose traffic from Google for re-directing a page?
I’m currently planning to a retire a discontinued product and put a 301 redirect to a related product (although not identical). The thing is, I’m still getting significant traffic from people searching for the old product by name. Would Google send this traffic to the new pages via the re-direct? Is Google likely to display the new page in place of the old page for similar queries or will it serve other content? I’d like to answer this question so that I can decide between the two following approaches: 1) Retiring the old page immediately and putting a 301 redirect to the new related pages. This will have the advantage of transferring the value of any link signals / referring traffic. Traffic will also land on the new pages directly without having to click through from another page. We would have a dynamic message telling users that the old product had been retired depending on whether they had visited out site before. 2) Keep the old product pages temporarily so that we don’t lose the traffic from the search engines. We would then change the old pages to advise users that the old product was now retired, but that we have other products that might solve their problems. When this organic traffic decreases over time, then we will proceed with the re-direct as above. I am worried though that the old product pages might outrank the new product pages. I’d really appreciate some advice with this. I’ve been reading lots of articles, but it seems like there are different opinions on this. I understand that I will lose between 10% - 15% of page rank as per the Matt Cutts video.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RG_SEO0 -
How to get a page re-crawed quickly
Does anyone know a way to get Google to re-crawl a webpage that does not belong to me. There are a bunch of pages that I have had links removed on and I want Google to re-crawl those pages to see the links have been removed. (current wait time is way way too long) Can anyone suggest some ways to get the page re-crawled. (I am unable to get the website owners to use WMT to do anything). Suggestions like good ping services and various other techniques would be very much appreciated. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gazzerman10 -
301 Re-Directs Puzzling Question on Page Returned in Search Results
On our website, www.BusinessBroker.net, we have 3 different versions of essentially the same page for each of our State Business for Sale Pages. Back in August, we did a test and did 301 redirects using 5 States. For a long while after doing the redirects, the pages fell out of Google search results - we used to get page 1 rankings. Just recently they started popping back up on Page 1. However, I noticed that the new page meta data is not what is being picked up -- here is the example. Keyword Searched for in Google -- "Maine Business for Sale" Our listing shows up on Page 1 -- # 8 Result URL returned is correct preferred version: - http://www.businessbroker.net/state/maine-Businesses_For_Sale.aspx However, the Page Title on this returned page is still the OLD page title - OLD TITLE -- maine Business for Sale Ads - maine Businesses for Sale & Business Brokers - Sell a Business on Business Broker Not the title that is designated for this page - New Title - Maine Businesses for Sale - Buy or Sell a Business in ME | BusinessBroker.net Ditto for Meta Description. Why is this happening? Also have a problem with lower case showing up rather than upper case -- what's causing this? http://www.businessbroker.net/state/maine-Businesses_For_Sale.aspx versus -- http://www.businessbroker.net/State/Maine-Businesses_For_Sale.aspx Any help would be appreciated. Thanks, MM
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MWM37720 -
Google changing the meta title for the homepage causing branding issues
A client of mine." Ross X Bute" current meta title is "Luxury designer clothing | Womens designer clothing" for the homepage. If i search for luxury designer clothing it will show the full meta title for the homepage. however if i search for the brand name.... "Ross & Bute" will show instead of the meta title. Whats the problem? Well my client a few month ago has decided to re brand the business to have a "X" to show instead of the "And". The rest of the site is branded with an "X" rather than "And" The URL www.rossandbute.com, so you can understand where google is getting this assumption from. Is there anyway to change this so it reads the the meta title in the SERPs? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Martin_Harris0 -
Should subdomains be avoided for brand new websites?
When creating a brand new website, will setting it up as a subdomain provide ranking benefits? I understand that if it's an existing domain, it's better to use a subfolder because a subdomain is treated as a different domain. But is there any reason not to start a website with the keyword in the subdomain? For example: keyword.domain.com The SERP's are dominated by websites which contain some variation of the head term, but the disadvantage of doing a similar this is your website looks very similar. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JonDavies540