Rebranding: How Can We Continue to Be Found by Searching the Old Name?
-
Our company was acquired and we are working toward an entire re-brand, including name change and new url.
We plan to appropriately 301 redirect the old site to the correct pages on the news site, etc. The question is, if users continue to search the old company name on search engines, will it appear in SERPs for the new site?
I'm guessing that our company name is associated to the old url and will that pass along the branded company name to the new url? My thoughts are to include the old company name in the sitemap.htm file and in the About Us section, particularly in the news release when the change occurs. Aside from that idea is to include social posts on G+, LinkedIn, our Blog, and Twitter as appropriate talking about the name change, all linking to the new website.
Any input would be most appreciated!
-
I would +1 Wiliam's answer here. 301 redirects in addition to Bing's site moving function should do the trick. Particularly if the links that point to the old domain, which will be redirected via the 301, contain your brand name - I've seen this carry the branded search rankings over regularly.
Moz has chosen to keep their home page title reading "SEOmoz is now Moz" for several months now - I don't know first-hand, but I'd imagine they've done this in part as insurance to ensure they rank for their old brand name. Might be worth considering the same.
-
301 redirects usually would suffice. Also I know Bing WMT has moving site function, which can help as well. And for Google WMT, I think you can make the same changes as well in there.
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
-
How to rank #1 for brand name when its 2 competitive keywords?
Hi Mozzers, I have recently began the SEO on a website which is a few years old, with little SEO done beforehand.
Branding | | Silkstream
I really want to get this domain ranking #1 for its brand name, however the brand name also happens to be a combination of two highly competitive keywords - one of them being "hire". I have done everything I can think of as a recommended step to signal Google, but it still sits between position #20 and position #15 (on a good day). So far I have:
Set up G+
Linked the website
Added Rel=publisher
Submitted site to Yell.com and a couple of other business directories
Added branded links from every the bio of each article on the blog pointing to the homepage.
Built a handful of branded links from related niche websites.
Set up social pages. Question:
What else can I do to improve on its position in the SERPS? More info:
The site ranks number 2 in Bing for the brand name. The domain is an exact match of two keywords without a hyphen between them - the site ranks position #1 for that search on Google. Question:
Would a hyphenated domain make any difference at all? Thanks everyone!0 -
Changing Social Media Profiles Name
Hi Mozzers, A client is thinking about changing their social media handles to shorten them to just their brand name as opposed to brand name plus the word 'apparel'. What is the implications of doing this and does the link change from facebook/brand-apparel or does the URL stay the same? Thanks Gareth
Branding | | Bush_JSM0 -
Facebook page not appearing in search results
Could anyone give a reason as to why a facebook page wouldn't be appearing in search results? - I've setup numerous facebook Pages for businesses and they usually get indexed and start appearing in the SERPs for their respective name/brand name relatively quickly, but have a Page for a business (which has even been quite active recently) and it's nowhere to be seen in Google's results (not even on a search for the complete URL). Any thoughts appreciated, thanks. Greg
Branding | | GregDixson0 -
Rebranding & Minimizing SEO impact
Hello everyone, One of my clients is undergoing a major rebrand, which will require some substantial changes to their domain / URL structure. Primarily, we're going to: Move from a high-ish DA site to a low DA site Change the subdomain URL structure (more on that below) Update the content (copy, design, structure) on www. site to match the new brand The content on the subdomains should remain the same 301 redirect all pages from old site to new site where applicable The current site architecture makes great use of subdomains, which are also going to be changing in terms of name. So, we're moving from oldsubdomain.olddomain.com to newsubdomain.newdomain.com (and not oldsubdomian.olddomain.com to oldsubdomain.olddomain.com). The content / structure of these pages is going to change minimally. We understand that we're going to take an SEO hit overall, but are there things we can do to minimize this hit? Anyway we can 'estimate' the hit? Anyway we can educate our client to as to what to expect beyond (it is going to be bad…). Please let me know. Thanks!
Branding | | 10SL0 -
Auto Complete misspells our brand. Can we do anything about it?
Howdy! Let's say our French client's name is "Something Réseau". When we type in "Something" in Google, we're suggested "Something Réso" which sounds the same but is incorrect. In the past year, the correct name has sent +21,000 branded keywords visits, whereas the incorrect has sent shy of 800. The brand is not new. Anything we can do about it? Thanks!
Branding | | AxialDev0 -
Online retailer has old product listing
A large online retailer in Europe used to sell a product that we sell in the US. They have not sold the product for more than a year but have not removed the item from their product listings. The price is marked down and the description says the product has been discontinued. They sell a very large number of items and have a high DA and this product listing ranks high in Google SERP. As you can imagine, this causes significant problems for us. Potential customers are given the wrong price and are also being told that the product has been discontinued. I have sent numerous requests to the retailer asking them to delete the product from their database with no success. Is it possible to send a notice to Google requesting that this product page be de-indexed? Any other suggestions? Best,
Branding | | ChristopherGlaeser
Christopher0 -
How To Remove Unwanted Search Query from 'Related Searches'
Currently, when I run a search for my company's website, one of the listings in my
Branding | | NiallSmith
"searches related to <my search="" query="">" is:</my> <my company="">scam</my> Does anyone know how to change the queries that appear in the 'related searches' section of the search results page?0