Rebranding/Url Structure Change
-
Hi Everyone,
First off thanks for taking the time to looking at my question. I was wondering about rebranding and URL structure changes. Right now my company is planning on changing their domain and doing a massive change to their site which includes a url structure change. The idea is in September they will be changing the site to be a combination of wordpress and ruby on rails (currently the site is ruby on rails). The homepage and design on the site will be completely different and parts of the site will be in php and other parts will be in ruby. The URL structure will also be changing completely at the same time. Each page will be completely different in structure, including the homepage (currently now it redirects you to a subfolder page that is your local page [i.e. nyc if you are in new york]). Then, the following month, they will be changing their domain name to a different domain.
I have asked them to do this in stages. First the domain, second the rebrand, and third the URL restructuring or we could lose SEO traffic but they asked a freelancer his opinion and the freelancer said that you could do the rebrand change with the URL restructure and then domain later and while you're SEO may disappear, it'll definitely return in 3 to 4 months. Could you tell me who is right and what the correct method is to make this change?
-
In general, it is best to do all of the changes (the domain, branding, and URL work) all on a development site (that is blocking search engines) and then release the new site only after everything is complete. If you space it out piecemeal over too long of a time, it will look very messy both to Google and your website visitors. Releasing a new, properly-migrated website all at once is the quickest way to mitigate any "SEO" damage and return to your prior traffic and ranking levels quickly.
However, it'd be impossible for me or anyone to be more specific without doing a deep dive into your site. However, there are some general best practices for site migrations. For reference on all of these, I'd take a look at what Moz did when migrating from seomoz.org to moz.com. Moz has a webinar and associated blog post that goes through all of the technical details and results. Aleyda Solis also has a good migration checklist with links to more resources here.
I hope that helps -- 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
-
LinkedIn & B2B Marketing/Brand Authority: How Useful Is It?
Hi Folks, I'm in the process of drawing up some detailed step by step marketing and content strategy guidelines and I'm currently researching LinkedIn as a platform and the potential benefits for B2B marketing on it and building brand authority. I'm coming across some conflicting data regarding how useful it is. Does anyone have any experience or opinions on the viability of LinkedIn for B2B marketing and building brand authority? A couple of questions would be: Is it a viable B2B marketing platform? Is it a good place to build brand and industry authority? What techniques would you concentrate on over others? Any advice on the subject would be great. Thanks, folks. Regards Gareth
Branding | | PurpleGriffon0 -
Examples of Domain Change for Big Brands
Hi I am trying to put together a case study with big brands that have changed their domain names over the last 2 years. So far I have: t-mobile.co.uk -> ee.co.uk guardian.co.uk -> theguardian.com Are there any others you could think of? It'd be much appreciated! Thanks, C
Branding | | Carlos-R0 -
Best practice for heading structures on Ecommerce homepages
I have been doing some research into the heading structures of some of the top selling online stores in the UK. One thing that has come to my attention is that many of them do not have H1 elements on their homepage. I am presuming that because they are targeting their own brand on the homepage that they feel no need to have a H1?? Examples are: http://www.boohoo.com/ http://chainreactioncycles.com/ http://www.jdsports.co.uk/home Some of them even use the logo as a H1 such as http://www.missguided.co.uk/ Does anyone think that using the logo as a H1 would have any negative effect from a search engine perspective? Look forward to hearing your thoughts!
Branding | | PIXUS0 -
Google Changing the Title Tag to Your Brand
A while back google started changing our title tags to have our name in it, which was great and reasonable for the most part. We recently ran into a problem with it as we have some properties on our site that fall under a dba. Here is the example. Title tag: Kolea- Waikoloa Vacation Rentals
Branding | | RobDalton
Kolea is a vacation rental community is a resort called Waikoloa. Waikoloa Vacation Rentals is our company name and www.waikoloavacationrentals.com is our company site. Here is the problem:
Title tag: Hualalai Resort- Waikoloa Vacation Rentals
Hualalai is a completely different place than Waikoloa and we do business in there as Hualalai Vacation Rentals, but keep our properties on our www.waikoloavacationrentals.com site rather than microsites. How can you let google know that what they are doing is incorrect for specific pages? Thanks,0 -
Will you show a case study/live analytics of Moz before and after name change?
so many people are interested these days in changing domains either for branding purposes like you did or some people believe that having an exact match domain will save the day. I believe posting any knowledge you have gained through your fantastic looking analytics system could shed light on a subject so many people seem to be asking about. Some things I would love to know regarding the amount of people that you have either gained or lost through organic search along with your ranking for the term "seo" And other things you guys must be learning along the way as well. I would also like to know your opinion of having a meter of some sort tell us just how many new people type in Moz vs seomoz I tink it would be a great topic for people to learn about branding from as well as a way to show off your new analytics. Fellow Mozers to you agree or not? ( I now see all the little tricks you guys have been putting in our head by never using seo in branding for a long time aside from of course your name) Great job on the transition. Sincerely, Thomas PS. Did Roger get a new coat of paint or did you just take him to the car wash?
Branding | | BlueprintMarketing0 -
Google Maps Address Change
Below is an email from a former client. He is a personal trainer and his wife is a personal trainer and therapist. They used to operate out of their home. But now they have another location for their business. My questions: Will the address change work? How long will it take ? Is there anything more they can do? We've come across an interesting problem in the last couple of weeks. It took a while to figure out what was going on, but I think I've found the source. When one searches 'xxxx Athletic' on google maps (a very common way to find businesses as you know), the address that comes up is xxxxxxxxx (our home). Clients are coming to our house rather than the gym. Luckily we're only a few mins away by car, so they aren't late once they figure out what has happened. We need to change it to our new business address. I have tried to do this via Google Places, and thought I was successful this morning, but alas the listing is still our house. Perhaps it will take a few days to update, but in the meantime I have added a page to my personal Google+ profile with the proper address info. If you happen to know anyway to help us that would be great.
Branding | | DanielFreedman0 -
Protecting Your Domain/Brand
Hi All, We've registered our domain with register.com they will not all us to buy .ca unless we reside in canada, same fro uk. Has anyone run into this problem? I wouldnt want someone to snatch it up and use it to their advantage.
Branding | | TP_Marketing0 -
Is it a good idea to participate in review / giveaway bloggers
Hi, I sell Gift Baskets for children and the best customers are Moms. Is it a good idea to participate in review / giveaway mom bloggers? The way it works I give the blogger a product to review. They write their true experience with the Gift Basket and they link to my site Then we do a few product giveaway to moms / (bloggers subscriber) once a month. Then moms will review the winning products. To participate in drawing moms will visit my site, follow my tweeter. Like or dislike me on Facebook……. For each action they do they will get one extra chance on drawing. In here I will get few links to different page of the site. Are these links are good links? I am not paying cash to buy the link. But I give them product to review and they get to keep it. Simply Sassy Media at http://simplysassymedia.com/ is a good example. they manage and connect me to a lot of the blogger sites.
Branding | | giftbasket4kids0