Rebranding is a process that most businesses have gone through. It can be long and difficult. You may believe that rebranding means overhauling all of your efforts and achievements so far. That may not be the case. Although rebranding can be a tricky process and things can go wrong – including your SEO – you can also build on your foundation and create something even better. Businesses rebrand for many reasons including changing their values and goals. Rebranding is all about optimizing and leveling-up. Below are seven ways to rebrand that are SEO-friendly.
Business Name
One of the most drastic rebranding moves is changing the name of your company or business. When your brand expands, your products may positively change over time and your niche may grow. Your target audience may also change. If you feel like your brand name no longer reflects your business’ main values or mission, then you need to change it. You will need to spread the news that there is a continuity between your new business and old business because they might not seem related. You also have to convince search engines that there is a continuity, which may perhaps be more difficult than convincing your audience. You will have to make a shift in your keyword strategy.
Domain Name
If you’re changing the name of your business, then you also need to change the name of your domain. Your business’ name and domain name should be the same so that your site is more visible on Google, and your customers are able to remember you more easily. You should also check if your domain name can easily rank on Google. It is ideal if you add keywords to the domain name but only if you can do it organically. You should also be using the same name on your social media platforms. Before you register the name, make sure it is available on social media. The best way to bridge the connection between your old website and your new domain name is by creating a page on your new domain that would be devoted to your old brand. That page could showcase the story of your brand development and how your brand has changed over time.
Product Name
Changing the name of your product should be similar to the process of changing your domain name. You have to make sure that your old and new product pages link to each other and have relevant explanations and anchor text (clickable text in a hyperlink). Linking the pages is not only helpful for SEO, but it is also helpful for your customers. Your customers may be confused as to why you decided to change the name of certain products. Your product pages have to explain why you made the decision to change the name of your product and exactly when you made that change.
Anchor Text
When someone clicks on the link of the old site, they can be redirected to your new website. If someone Googles your old domain name, people might not be able to find you. We addressed how you can deal with this type of issue by creating a page that is dedicated to your previous brand. There is also the issue of anchor text in your backlinks. When you redirect traffic to your new website, the anchor text from the sites you created links on remains the same. For example, if anchor text contains keywords with the name of your old product instead of your new one, this will damage your SEO efforts. To deal with this, you have to audit your backlinks from other websites. You should list all of them and find out which ones contain the old names in the anchor text. After that, you have to reach out to the blog owners individually to let them know they need to make the changes. It’s best to contact them prior to making all of the branding changes.
Page Speed
Your page speed is the amount of time it takes for the browser to get the first byte of info from the web server or the page load time (how long it takes for your page to display the full content of a page). Website visitors will only wait two seconds for your website to load. If your website does not load within that time frame, your visitors will abandon your site quickly. If you have low engagement rates and high bounce rates, Google will believe that your site is not user-friendly. Page speed is also an important ranking factor, as Google indicated site speed is one signal used by its algorithms to rank pages. Some useful ways to boost your website’s speed are by reducing HTTP requests, using browser caching, enable compression and lessening server response time.
Website
When you change the name of your business, you also should be changing your online presence which may include the design of your website. A website redesign means more than just changing the look of a website. Website redesign takes a lot of careful planning, time and effort. You have to make absolutely sure that you’ll be receiving more benefits from the redesign than drawbacks. Redesigning your website can improve your site performance and SEO. You don’t want your website structure to be tedious for users. Your website redesign can help your business reach its goals by raising user engagement, generating more leads and driving traffic.
Mobile Responsive
It is crucial that your website be designed in a way that it could fit on the screen of a mobile device. In this day and age, the amount of mobile users is rising. Since this is the case, Google’s major aim is to make the experience of mobile users more effortless. Google has been indexing the mobile version of your site when ranking it, not your desktop version. In order to rank high in search engine results pages (SERPs), your website should be mobile compatible and responsive. Your mobile content should not be hard to follow, your clickable elements should be tappable, you should use HTML5 to display animations and video content, and your forms should be easy to fill out on a phone.
