Whar are the Keyword and Link Implications of renaming a Website
-
I'm about to change the name of a popular site classyauto.com to nationalvehicle.com.
The reason for the name change is mainly because of the negative report on classyauto from years past.
We've decided to rename the company to National Vehicle for that reason and other reasons. With that, the current site does not currently rank high for many of the natural organic niche keywords we want to target. But, it does have a good amount of links and traffic.
I would like recommendations on the best method to rename the site including any ideas on what to do with existing directories, links, etc. efficiently and effectively.
I would also like input on what NOT TO DO.
Thanks in advance and any tools, tricks, or additional resources you can point me to would be greatly appreciated.
-
Yes, bad reviews and reputation online for classyauto but not for nationalvehicle. I undertand how to combat the negative reputation issues, but it's really mute since we are changing the name altogether for various reasons.
-
When you say negative report you mean bad reviews and reputation online? Please clarify your need for doing this.
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
-
Should the Facebook page be just the brand name or also include keywords?
Hi. Do you recommend that a company's Facebook Page be just the Brand Name, or should it include some keywords in the title?
Branding | | JonsonSwartz0 -
Opinions For Getting Worthwhile Links For Longevity
Hi Everyone, I have just joined the Moz community and have been reading through a lot of content. I have a question and I would like to put it out to all of the professional digital marketers here to hear their take on it. Basically I work for a construction company that has developed a way to build extensions to houses which is environmentally friendly and cost effective. Obviously the house extensions market is pretty competitive and I need to work out how I can make headway into the market for the digital marketing side of things. The website is still under construction and I am having it built in order to will viewers to enter their contact details for more information as well as provide lots of useful content that show why the product will be more cost effective than say a standard timer frame constructed house extension. We are having some professional videos made as well so we can set up a YouTube channel and this will be clearly visible on the website as well. What I would like advice on is how would you start to build quality links to a site like this. We are not going for just local trade but more national (UK). The main thing is that we have longevity and I know it wont happen very quickly but I want to ensure that we do things the right way. Thanks Barry
Branding | | newbiebarry0 -
PR Web Press Release for Links
I was wondering if submitting press release, such as to PR Web, if the links, on the press release linking back to our site still have any value in today's SEO world? If so, what is the right way to take out the most value of a Press Release.?? Please advise, Morris
Branding | | PrintEZ0 -
No Domain Link In Press Release, What About Yelp?
Hi Moz, I understand that using a PR for SEO benefit is old-school, black hat, and largely outlawed by Google. We are simply trying to get our name pushed further into the local market, i.e., using a press release for it's natural intention. Our company offers free quotes through our site and the scheduling of jobs with new clients is largely done online. I think it seems silly NOT to have a link to our URL in the press release, but rather than poke Google, we're fine omitting it. However, would linking our Yelp near the end be a big deal? Yelp no-follows their URLs back to the company site so there isn't a risk with pumping up a support link through PR and we can provide SOME clickable link to our information. Thoughts?
Branding | | kirmeliux0 -
Using keywords instead of brand name on G+ to rank for local terms.
I noticed something this morning, when performing a search on Google UK for "Intensive driving courses southend" the first position is awarded to a driving school that is using exact match keywords instead of brand name on their G+ page to rank for local terms. See this for yourself here: https://www.google.co.uk/#q=intensive+driving+courses+southend Until then, my site had held position 1 for this term for well over a year. Every gut instinct I have tells me that this will not work forever and its not something I should implement, however I'm interested to hear if anyone else is using this tactic, and how its working for them? How can I compete with this "grey hat" tactic?
Branding | | Silkstream0 -
Changing My Home Page Focus Keyword
Hello, We recently launched a new home page design on our company website, but we still have the same focus keyword in the title, H1, and in parts of the page copy. However, this focus keyword no longer represents our entire brand. We want to change the focus keyword and have done some research on the keyword difficulty and local searches in Google, but are still uncertain on the potential effects. Let me explain our situation more in depth. Instabill provides business owners with merchant accounts and other services. Our current focus keyword is offshore merchant accounts. However, over the past three months, we have been helping businesses establish US merchant accounts (retail, mobile, and online--but retail and mobile to US only while online to merchants everywhere) and intend to continue to increase our US merchant base. We are also still able to provide offshore merchant accounts. Our fear is that when a US merchant comes to our website (http://www.instabill.com), they will see Offshore Merchant Accounts in big H1 letters and leave our site since they want a local US merchant account. However, we still want to make sure our international merchants know we can still work with them. Thus said, we would like to change our focus keyword to something more broad, but still descriptive of our brand: merchant services. To elaborate, we want our H1 heading to read Merchant Services for Retail and Online Businesses. Merchant services is more descriptive since we provide more than just merchant accounts. We also provide the payment gateway, free shopping cart modules, help registering businesses, help obtaining an SSL certificate, and a discounted PCI Certification Service through McAfee. We have more than one page on our website that ranks for the term online merchant accounts, but none that rank for merchant services. However, we are willing to put in the work to ensure we optimize our website properly and put in the effort to make the change successful. Merchant services is also a keyword we would like to optimize on our website, so making the change on the home page will only help the steps in the process. Statistics:
Branding | | Instabill
Offshore Merchant Accounts has a 35% difficulty level and we consistently rank for SERPs #1 and #2. This term, according to the Google Keyword Tool, only receives 70 monthly searches in the US, 50 in the UK, 10 in Canada, and 10 in Australia. These are the four countries of most importance to our website. Merchant Services has a 57% difficulty level and we do not rank for it in Google at all since we have never tried to optimize for this term in the past. Also according to the Google Keyword Tool, this term receives 14,800 monthly searches in the US, 1,600 in the UK, 590 in Canada, and 260 in Australia. Clearly, merchant services could potentially get us much more traffic than offshore merchant accounts if transitioned correctly. I suppose my bottom line question is this: Would it be a bad idea to change my primary focus keyword on my home page? What type of results should I expect to see if searching Google for my company name? Thank you for all of your help. Meghan
Senior Copywriter of Instabill0 -
Making the most from a Press Release being featured on news websites
We have recently sent out a press release to targeted publications and have been lucky enough to be featured on a hand full of quality news websites which all feature links to our main URL. A minor draw back is some of the sites have just used the press release with minimal changes so we are a tiny bit worried about duplicate content issues but the sites are all high quality with a Domain Authority of 65+. Anyway I am wondering how best to capitalise on these. A few ideas I have:- 1. Go to our Company Google Plus page and +1 them. 2. Go to our Twitter profile and favourite the "tweets" that have been sent out mentioning each article. 3. Go to our Facebook page and "Like" the articles on each of the sites. 4. Setup a Squidoo page called "My Company featured around the internet" and link to the news pages. 5. Setup a Tumblr page called " MY Company featured around the internet" and link to the news pages. We are not sure if featured the links/urls on our "Press" section will undermine any benefit of link juice - we were thinking of doing a PDF of the pages and hosting the PDF on our site.
Branding | | JohnW-UK0 -
.NET VS .COM VS Keyword Density in the URL, What do you suggest?
I am about to launch an eCom project for a new company. The client has three URL's available. I recognize keyword density is slowly becoming less and less of a factor, but still has significant relevance. I haven't had much experience working on .NET URL's and would like to know anything related to the effects of .NET url's vs. .COM url's. Also, just what you would go with and why? Option 1 "EXACTMATCHKEYWORD.net" (17 total characters) Option 2 "MOSTLYMATCHINGKEYWORDcompany.com" (21 total characters, with company) Option 3 "ABEXACTMATCHKEYWORD.com" -AB represents the company's initials/logo. (19 total characters) USEFUL POINTS 1. 95% of purchases will be one time purchases (so I'm not focused as much on company branding as usual). 2. The company name is actually "exact matching keyword Company" 3. We will be targeting 100's of terms, but the "exact match keyword" represents 1/4 of total search volumes and thus is extremely important.
Branding | | mgordon0