How to Rebrand While Maintaining Rankings on Search Engines

There are a number of causes you may need to rebrand. Rebranding will not be one thing foreseen or one thing that’s a part of any marketing strategy. It is virtually at all times a results of surprising circumstances, a correction or an enchancment to your model. Regardless of the motive behind your determination to rebrand, know that regardless of how disruptive rebranding sounds, if finished appropriately, it’s extremely efficient and generally is a game-changer.

The digital advertising company, which I handle, efficiently rebranded not too long ago. The rationale behind our rebranding was an surprising circumstance. One other firm that we’ve got by no means heard of claimed that our identify was confusingly just like their trademark, though our names did not solely match. Upon checking, we realized they have been the senior customers of the trademark and determined to rebrand. Trademark law is complicated; getting a trademark legislation legal professional’s recommendation is at all times a good suggestion if you end up in an identical state of affairs.

Our digital advertising company, now referred to as Search Schematic, was well-established and loved excessive rankings on search engines like google and yahoo. So, we wanted to rebrand to our new identify and area whereas sustaining rankings on search engines like google and yahoo. That is how we efficiently rebranded with out seeing any everlasting drop in our rankings:

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Select a model and area identify — and carry out a trademark clearance and area historical past search

Selecting a model identify was a difficult activity. There have been a number of names we got here up with earlier than Search Schematic that we had to surrender as a result of unavailability of an identical area or the chance of confusion with different logos. We did not need historical past to repeat itself. In response to an skilled trademark legislation legal professional, Nikki Sissel, “It is essential you get a trademark clearance search by somebody with expertise and experience in trademark legislation when selecting your model identify to guard your self from potential litigation threats.”

Our distinctive identify made it easy to amass the matching domain with clear historical past.

Create a brand new emblem

Logos are a vital side of name identification, and it’s what helps make manufacturers distinctive. Creating a brand new emblem to mirror our new identify was a vital step in our rebranding course of, and it was the very first thing we did as soon as we had chosen our model identify and bought the area.

Stick to what’s needed

Within the planning part of our rebranding, we thought-about together with some adjustments to our net design, and that looks like a good suggestion if you’re reinventing. But quickly, we realized it could be higher if we did what was needed as a result of it could improve the probabilities of a profitable migration, and if one thing goes fallacious, it could be straightforward for us to pinpoint the supply and troubleshoot. Google additionally states this to be follow. We reserved adjustments to our net design for later after area migration.

Associated: 4 Ways to Survive Your Company’s Rebrand

Area migration course of

Area migration is a posh course of, and so much can go fallacious. Making a backup of your web site earlier than you proceed with migration is a needed step. We created a few backups as our security internet.

Use the Addon area in your Cpanel together with your present internet hosting supplier so as to add your new area and set up WordPress. We had a fundamental WordPress theme put in on our new area earlier than migration.

There are other ways emigrate your web site. We are going to share what labored for our WordPress web site and can probably give you the results you want, and additionally it is the only manner. We used the Updraftplus premium plugin emigrate our website, however many plugins, like WP All In One Migration, will do the job and provides you with clear instructions.

After cloning our web site to our new area, we turned on the WordPress possibility, “discourage search engines like google and yahoo from indexing this website,” till we have been able to publish to the general public. We up to date our content material with our new identify the place needed, up to date our emblem, ensured all inside hyperlinks talked about our new area after which reviewed and ran exams till we have been happy.

Probably the most essential step in area migration is implementing 301 redirects. They completely redirect outdated URLs to new ones and go all of the rating energy. In response to Google, it is an effective way to direct individuals and search engines like google and yahoo to your new pages. The commonest technique to implement redirects is utilizing .htaccessfile, however some plugins additionally allow you to handle redirects. As soon as applied, run exams to make sure the whole lot works.

The remainder of the method consists of the next steps:

1. Add and confirm your new area in Google Search Console.

2. In your outdated area GSC common settings, use the change of tackle setting to tell Google you’ve gotten moved your website.

3. Add a sitemap to your new area in GSC.

4. Google recommends keeping redirects in place for a minimum of one 12 months, or indefinitely, for a greater person expertise and to keep away from dropping hyperlink fairness. A superb follow is to make use of this time to replace as many hyperlinks as attainable from exterior web sites with the brand new area, beginning with these that you’ve got management over, reminiscent of social media accounts, after which reaching out to web sites linking to your outdated area to request that they replace their hyperlinks.

5. Share the information of your rebranding on all of your social media and write a weblog submit. A press launch works greatest for any such information.

6. Be prepared for some downtime. Our rankings fluctuated however steadily bounced again. Hold monitoring your site visitors on Google Analytics and rankings on Google Search Console.

With good planning, what appeared like a busy activity labored out to be simple. We’re delighted with our new identify, Search Schematic, and have acquired nice suggestions. We hope our story serves as an inspiration for others who could also be considering a rebranding of their very own.

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