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
-
What is The Time/Cost For SEO In Rebranding A Large Site
From an SEO agency perspective. What would be the estimated man hours and hard cost to rebrand a large site (1000+pages)? And all that would go into it, like 301 redirects and etc.? I have a pretty good idea, of what it would take and how perilous it could be from an SEO perspective. Because of anchor text / 301 redirects / organic potential traffic loss and etc. I just don't know the man hours and hard cost would be.
Branding | | SMG-Texas1 -
How To Rebrand A Company In The Eyes of Google?
Greetings, Nearly 6 years ago, our company switched its entire business model from providing customized vitamins to a women's health publisher that offers medical advice, news and health tips. We have actively developed a decent link profile for our new brand around women's health and specific health conditions. Nonetheless the old vitamin-related keyword profile is still very prevalent. We have many hundreds of links with old vitamin-related anchor text scattered across the web linking to our main site and to many vitamin mini-sites that we own. What is the best way to rebrand ourselves and basically eliminate this old link profile? My first thought is to immediately park / take down all our vitamin-related domains, and eventually these links will no longer carry any weight in the eyes of Google. The other strategy is to attempt to contact all the sites with the old anchor text and ask them to take the links down. This is not an exciting option to me as I know that this is tedious and a slow process with many dead-ends. Thanks in advance for any advice. Kind regards, Eric Darby
Branding | | Eric_Lifescript0 -
Should Global Company List in Local Directories?
Hi All, I am the Web Marketing Manager for a small, yet global, company. I've just started working at this company and I am focusing a lot of attention right now on link building, as the company is not great there in comparison to competitors. So right now I'm submitting us to directories. My question is whether submitting to things like Yelp and the Google Local Business Directory make sense for a global company. I want the inbound links available from those sources, but I just want to make sure I'm not missing something in regards to this. i.e. a pissed off customer could leave a negative review about the company on Yelp. That doesn't worry me, because if a customer is pissed off and wants to vent online, they'll find somewhere to do it. Is there anything else related that I might be missing? Thanks, Ben Alvord
Branding | | Ben_Alvord0 -
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 -
Link local online newspaper ad to newspaper's spash page or my site?
We just started advertising on the web version of our local newspaper. They suggest our ads go to a "splash page" they created for us on their site. The page haslinks , images and text taken from each of our main categories,. Plus links and feeds from our twitter and facebook pages. And a google map. This page shows a page authority 1 with 0 links. Is there any reason to link our ad to a page like this rather than going direct to our website page? Thank you Handcrafter
Branding | | stephenfishman0 -
Law Practice SEO with Multiple Lawyers
I am working with a friend of mine who is a lawyer. He has one partner and a couple of other lawyers at the firm. The attorneys each have their own Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin ,Youtube and other social media accounts. I am trying to create one brand, which is the name of the law firm. Question 1: It would make sense to me to create all social media accounts under the law firm name. Would you agree on this? I'm worried that users wouldn't use the company facebook page if they are used to communicating to the attorney through their personal accounts. Maybe I should put the social media links for the firm on the home page only and then put the individual social media links next to the attorney profile page? Question 2: The firm has been posting Youtube videos but under one of the attorney's names. I have 16 new videos they want posted and they asked me if they should be posted to a new company name channel (yet to be created) or post them under one of the attorneys accounts? I think that most attorneys might look out for themselves ahead of the Firm. If they ever change jobs, they don't have a built up social profile if everything is listed under the firm name. Maybe the way to go would be to help optimize both the attorneys personal profiles and then the firm? Thoughts?
Branding | | Czubmeister0 -
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