SEO Experts often say that “Rebranding is a pretty daunting process.”
But is that really true?
Well, pretty much yes! With so many internet marketing outlets accessible today, rebranding your business has become far more difficult. It often becomes a headache for the CMO and SEO departments as it welcomes the additional work of handling Google along with dealing with deep introspection, repositioning, inventive, legal difficulties, and everything else.
So you might be wondering-
How to make the process of rebranding easier?
In this blog, we have brought you the top six means to make sure that your next rebranding campaign goes smoothly. But before delving into that sphere, let us first understand the concept of REBRANDING!
What is Rebranding?
Rebranding is the procedure of giving an existing product or company a new appearance and feel. The most common objective of rebranding is to change a customer's view of a product, service, or organization by reviving the brand and giving the appearance more fresh and relevant to the customer's preferences.
After all, the purpose of rebranding is to enhance your reputation in one or more ways to become more relevant, competing, and lucrative in your targeted audience. With some careful preparation, know-how, and a strong team on your side, rebranding may be done successfully.
Your business will appreciate you when your SEO ranking does not plummet as soon as your new brand is introduced. Further, rebranding might cost you not just your SEO ranking but also the clients you seek if done incorrectly.
How Can You Maintain Your SEO While Rebranding?
In today's scenario, everyone is making efforts to climb to the top of Google's search results, and no one can afford to turn all such efforts into vain. Let's look at all the factors that you must keep in mind while revamping your website with a Digital Marketing Company to avoid a worse SEO ranking.
Retain The Original Domain Name
Changing your company's image at any level brings along a pretty overwhelming and arduous process with several possible pitfalls. On the other hand, keeping your original domain name keeps the procedure easy and reduces the risk of harming your SEO results. However, if you feel compelled to make the change, you must put in a lot of effort with URL redirection unless you really want your past SEO efforts to be wrecked.
The easiest strategy to show search engines that there is a relationship between both the old and new brands is to create a new page devoted to the old brand on the new domain. This page should explain the modifications you made as well as provide information about what's new with your organization- acting as a transition between the old and new brands.
Make sure this page connects to your new website once you've completed this. This won't immediately provide you with the same SEO results as previously, but it will undoubtedly have a big and beneficial influence.
Preserve The Existing Content
Modifying your company's name generally entails more than simply a domain name change, as it almost necessitates a complete makeover of your website. However, if you have to fully revamp your website, attempt to maintain as much of your original material as possible. If you need to develop new material for your website, attempt to replicate it as nearly as possible to prevent compromising your originality and credibility.
This will assist you in avoiding a dip in your rankings. The readers and search engines both notice when things change. You must also consider simple elements like typefaces and headers, for these small touches may make a major difference in terms of SEO.
Keep Your Old Website Online For Few More Days
Since optimizing your site consumes a lot of effort and work, you mustn't squander any of it regarding rebranding. Some SEO experts advise against removing your old site as soon as the new one is up. It is because the new IP address usually takes several days for servers to recognize. This implies that deleting your old site shortly after launching your new one might possibly undo all of your SEO efforts.
If possible, try to keep the previous site alive on an interim web address. If you leave it up for approximately 5-7 days, it won't damage anyone, so be cautious and don't delete it right away. Simply ensure that a crawler cannot reach the site.
Make Optimum Use Of Redirects
The entire process of rebranding comes down to 301 redirecting your pages and then tracking your SEO from your old site to your new site in Webmaster Tools. This is the most significant part of SEO as the 301 redirection method works wonders for sending users to a different URL than the one they requested originally. When a website's URL is changed for whatever reason, make sure that you keep its domain authority and search rankings.
Also, you should redirect every page from your old site to the matching page on your new site to improve the user experience and raise your search engine results. Keep in mind that when you move a page from one URL to another, the search engines will take some time to find the 301, identify it, and credit the new page with the same ranks and trust as the old one.
Keep Old URL Structure Alive
Customers want familiarity; therefore, leave the URL structure intact when revamping a website. A crawler can help you map out your old website carefully before starting on a new design to gather a complete inventory of existing pages. Once done, you must map all of the old URLs to the new ones and use 301 redirects to transfer your users and authority to the new site.
Through this process, all of your pages will preserve their current ranks. Do not forget to crawl to the revised website and compare it to the original after viewing.
Promotion Of Your Brand
Finally, it is time to spread the message. After revamping, you must sell your branding strategy by upgrading all of your social media sites and directories. This might be simple or difficult, influenced by the social networking site and directories. You can also improve your traffic and overall exposure by doing the following:
- Email notification: Send out an email to your clients, suppliers, partners, and associates informing them of the upcoming changes.
- Press release: Prepare a press release and distribute it to important media sources in your field.
- Guest Posts: You can write a few blog articles for websites with audiences that might benefit from your rebrand journey.
Wrapping Up!
Once the promotion is done, you must keep a careful eye on the modifications you have made in order to notice any abnormalities early on. For at least 2-3 months, monitor your website to understand how your customers are responding to this new change.
Though rebranding is difficult, all these SEO practices are the key to success. One must know that these SEO practices don’t signal the end of your organic search rankings and traffic efforts but rather a fresh start. Just remember to be thorough and cautious throughout this procedure.
