Retaining old brand traffic after a rebrand
-
Hi,
How would you retain the organic search traffic for your old brand after a full rebrand? Website redesign, new company name, new domain name etc
If we change from blahservices.com to fooservices.com and do all the things you would for a regular domain migration, will Google still return pages from the new brand fooservices.com when a user searches for old brand "blah services keyword"?
We will be doing the following to try and not lose organic search traffic for our old brand:
Keep PPC running on our old brand name keywords
Mention our old brand on the new website in the footer i.e. "Copyright blah services trading as foo services"
Publish a press release about the rebrand on our blog
Say something like "blah services has rebranded as foo services" in meta descriptions for a while
Put old and new brands in meta title for a while
Keep 301 redirects from old domain in place foreverIs there anything else you would add to that?
Thanks,
K
-
Thanks Nick,
We're happy to mention the old brand on the new site and will be talking about the rebrand on the new site.
Agree leaving the old brand in the meta title for some time will help. We're also planning on mentioning old and new brands in the meta description so users can easily see we are the same company.
-
Thanks Egol,
Google forgetting our old brand over time is what we thought might happen.
The amount of brand traffic we have is indeed significant and we want to retain as much of it as poss. I know there's more to be had with the rebrand but that's an unknown quantity and not concrete enough to not worry about old brand traffic.
We're in the UK and the old brand will be the parent company. Plus we're a limited company so we're required by law to say something like "blah services ltd trading as foo services" on our site.
So we can add something along the lines of "Copyright blah services ltd trading as foo services all rights reserved" in the footer of all pages.
And we'll host a PR about the rebrand on our blog and mention the history in our About page.
But to clarify, can we assume that over time traffic for the old brand will diminish.. particularly if we don't mention the old brand on the new site? Just want to manage expectations.
-
If the previous site had a fair amount of authority and you 301 redirect it appropriately to the new site it likely will maintain its rankings for the previous brand term. This will be from the amount of anchor links with the previous branded term within it ie brad or brand.com.
Alternatively, you can do a couple other items to optimize the new site for the old branded term. For instance, optimize the title tag of the new site to read something similar to "Nicks Pizza and Sandwiches - formally Nicks Burger Spot"
Of course this is assuming you want your new sites associated with your old brand. If that's not the case then you'll want to do a lot of brand reputation management to bury mentioned of the previous brand and to dissasociate your new site.
-
So will Google still return our new domain for searches related to our old brand?
If your new site has no traces of your old brand then search engines will forget about your old brand over time. Off-site links that hold the name of your old brand as anchor text can keep this alive but not as strongly as if the old brand had an visible presence on your site.
I don't know how much branded traffic you had in the past. If it was significant you might want to include a mention of your old brand on each page of your new site, or have a history page, optimized for your old brand that can compete in the SERPs when someone searches for your old brand. For this to work well, your old brand would need to be a distinct name that does not have a lot of competition.
-
Hi Egol,
Yes the new website will be a big improvement on usability and we'll be doing lots of great PR to get the new name out there and we're excited about all the new traffic and increased engagement that will bring.
However, current branded traffic accounts for a significant chunk of revenue and we don't want to lose this traffic if possible
So will Google still return our new domain for searches related to our old brand?
Or should we right off traffic for our old brand and focus on new traffic for the new brand?
We accept there might be a temporary traffic dip but we're ok with that if traffic returns back to previous levels after google has picked up the domain change.
Can we still expect to get traffic for our old brand once things have settled though?
The PPC is more about bidding on our old brand keywords so we still retain some of that traffic. The PR is for raising awareness for our new brand and will bring lots of lovely new traffic, hopefully.
But ultimately we want to retain the traffic for our old brand while generating new traffic for our new brand
Is that too greedy?
-
Honestly, if you don’t want to lose your current traffic shift it to new domain, I am not saying it’s not possible but you will see a dip (maybe temporary) but there will be a dip until Google figure out the new website, index their pages, recognize the link juice pass from old domain to a new domain.
I believe if you are doing PR and PPC to let people know about the new brand, in that case Google will soon figure out that the old brand has been shifted to new brand and allow the new brand to appear in search results when someone search for old brand name.
Again, what activities you have mentioned are great but there will be a dip so you have to take in to consideration and act accordingly.
Hope this helps!
-
Make the new site kickass better. That's why you are doing all of this, right?
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
-
Old Content after 301 Redirect Success
Hi, I want to ask what need I do to the old content after my 301 redirect to the new domain with the same content success? Do I need to remove that old content? Nothing bad happen right? Thanks
Technical SEO | | matthewparkman0 -
An informational product page AND a shop page (for same brand)
Hi all, This is my first foray into e-commerce SEO. I'm working with a new client who sells upscale eBikes online. Since his products are expensive, he wants to have informational pages about the brands he sells eg. www.example.com/brand. However these brands are also category pages for his online shop eg. www.example.com/shop/brand I'm worried about keyword cannibalization and adding an extra step/click to get to the shop (right now the navigational menu takes you to the information page and from there you have to click to get to the shop) I'm pretty sure it would make more sense to have ONE killer shopping page that includes all the brand information but I want to be 100% sure before I advise him to take this big step. Thoughts?
Technical SEO | | MouthyPR1 -
Is repurposing an old sub domain better than creating a new sub domain?
We have a good sub domain like** art.ourwebsite.com** which currently sells custom canvas art. We have owned the domain since 2013 but it has only been live for the past few weeks. We want to redesign & repurpose the page to continue to sell custom canvas art but will eventually include other merchandise like mugs, tshirts, etc which wouldn't be custom. Would it be best to keep art.ourwebsite.com since is a shorter/more memorible & older sub domain or would it be best to update the name to something that encompasses our new products? Our marketing team has suggested yourart.ourwebsite.com
Technical SEO | | sb10301 -
Google News Referral Traffic Gone after CMS Upgrade
Hoping someone can help. I've tried the Google forum which is it's usual vacuous hole of no help. We recently upgraded our CMS which now includes automated sitemaps (not sure if this impacts news sitemaps, though). Anyway, after rollout, we're no longer getting any traffic from Google News. Sequence of Events: 1. Dec. 13 launch 2. Google news referral traffic stopped 3. IT tried to 'fix' and now we're getting the elusive 'publication name' message The publication name specified in your Sitemap does not match the publication name we have for your site in our database. Please check that the publication name in your Sitemap exactly matches the publication name displayed for your articles in Google News. 4. Retested sitemap When I retest the news sitemap, it returns 0 errors. When I do a site:mnn.com (our website) on the Google New Homepage, new content is showing up in SERP Yet, still no google news referral traffic. Our news sitemap is www.mnn.com/googlenews.xml Can someone help? We're a news site, and can't afford to lose this traffic. Would love an early Christmas present. Thanks!! Lisa
Technical SEO | | Aggie0 -
Canonical tags pointing at old URLs that have been 301'd
I have a site which has various white label sites with the same content on each. I have canonical tags on the white label sites pointing to the main site. I have changed some URLs on the main site and 301'd the previous URL to the new ones. Is it ok to have the canonicals pointing to the old URLs that now have a 301 redirect on them.
Technical SEO | | BeattieGroup0 -
Rebuilding an old website
Since we have a strong website; meaning high traffic, but we got 2 issues 1. the framework of the design is not user friendly. 2. the current platform is really old; therefor it comes up with technical problems daily/ We are worried about our links which will affect in our new design, what would be wise to do? Thanks
Technical SEO | | apexcue0 -
Why is Google stripping/replacing my TITLE tag for the site with the BRAND Name only when looking at BRAND level search
When doing a search in Google (US Proxy) - Google is stripping and replacing my functional TITLE with the brand name only (say 'Nike'), but if you do a specific search term like ('buy nike shoes') and see a top 10 listing for my site's homepage, now the title works and shows correctly. I saw this a few years ago with another one of my company domains, but didn't ask the question as it worked out. Thanks for any insight.. NOTE: It's not damaging any results, or rankings for the site.. but: when searching for BRAND name of the company, like I explained, it's replacing a optimized title for the BRAND name, and then re-placing it naturally when deep search brings up the homepage and the TITLE looks fine.. Very weird at best! Thanks, Rob
Technical SEO | | RobMay0 -
Old Domain - What to do?
A client recently bought an older domain that is keyword-rich to an aspect of his company. The main website has both e-commerce and call-to-action elements. Our team is split on whether or not to create a micro-site on that domain focused on that aspect of the work that he does or to simply redirect the old domain to his main website. I have not had the opportunity to look at the link profile of the recently acquired domain nor do I have any idea of how many times it's changed hands (which would seem to now be a possible indicator of doorway pages). If any clarification would help, please let me know and I'll do my best to answer.
Technical SEO | | MountainMedia0