How to Keep SEO Authority When Rebranding a Website

Your brand's value has a major impact on search engine rankings and organic traffic. The impact of rebranding on SEO and your placement in SERPs varies depending on the nature of the rebranding. 

Regardless of the reason, many businesses will need to relocate their websites to new domains at some point. However, if you've spent years building up your rankings, domain authority, and traffic, losing it all for the sake of a new URL can be scary.

Fortunately, it doesn't have to be like that. There are methods for keeping your hard-earned SEO value.

In this article, we will discuss some tips for rebranding and relocating your website without losing any SEO authority.

When it comes to rebranding a website, it's important to approach the process with care and attention to detail. There are a few key steps you should take to ensure a smooth transition.

Before making any changes, you need to perform an in-depth audit of your current site. You should be fully aware of the content you have and the structure of your website. 

When auditing the website traffic you should be on the lookout for:

• Traffic sources
  
• Desktop  vs. mobile traffic
  
• Branded vs. non-branded traffic
  

It is essential to audit your current URLs when optimizing the SEO of your website. This procedure will help you in setting up efficient redirects and making sure that all URLs are accounted for. 

Auditing your URLs can also help you identify pages that are no longer relevant or provide little SEO value, allowing you to remove them from the redirect process. Auditing can help you in identifying any duplicate content issues on your website. Likewise, you should also be on the lookout for high-value content. 

It is important to look for low-quality backlinks that can cause more harm than good. Before launching your site, you should properly disavow these backlinks. On the other hand, for all high-quality backlinks, make sure that the pages they link to are properly redirected to your new site. 

You should identify the keywords that are driving the most traffic to your site, as well as the pages that have the most keyword associations. This will help you understand your current rankings for each page.

It is important to conduct an audit of your valuable content to find out which content is contributing to your rankings. 

Your content's overall theme and high-volume keywords need to be kept, and they should be integrated into heading tags and other significant SEO components. 

It's important to keep original content as much as you can. Even minor details like fonts and headers can have an impact on SEO. By paying attention to these details, you can help make sure your content is search engine optimized and more likely to be discovered by your target audience.

Now that you know what's on your site, you'll need to transfer everything to your new domain.  

If you want to keep all of your existing content, simply move it to your new server. And, unless your current site is disorganized, try keeping the same URL structure.

Set up 301 redirects from all of your old domain's pages to their corresponding pages on the new one. If you keep the same content and URL structure, you'll have identical matches for all of them.

But if you have changed your URL structure, identifying the most relevant matches for each page on your old site becomes a little more difficult. You will need to look up corresponding pages individually. 

After you've finished your redirects, go back and double-check the valuable links to make sure they're still pointing back to your site. When set up properly, these redirects will pass almost all of the link value from your old site to the new one. In most cases, that is enough to guarantee that your new site continues to rank well in search engines.

You want to notify other sites that you've moved now that your new site is up and running.

To start with, you have to inform Google that you have relocated your website. You should perform an XML sitemap update and notify Google of the new domain by using the "Change of Address tool" in Search Console.

Then, update your social media profiles and any listings you have in local directories and review platforms. You may then contact other websites that link to your old domain and ask that the links are up-to-date. 

Create a document that lists all brand mentions and citations with the old brand name so that you can easily update them after the site goes live. 

Then, after the site is live, update your business contact information everywhere. Inform important referral traffic sources about the brand name and URL change. To maintain a consistent brand message, this process should be ongoing. 

Finally, develop a strong PR plan for both before and after the launch to boost brand awareness and ensure a smooth transition. This includes press releases, social media campaigns, and other forms of marketing.

It's now time to spread the word about your new brand. If you succeed, you will essentially have increased overall visibility and more traffic than before. This will have a positive impact on SEO performance and will help you in regaining your search engine rankings.

You should send an email announcement to your suppliers, customers, friends, and business partners. You want your target audience to search for your company using your new brand name and visit your new website.

Create a compelling press release that tells the story of your new brand and share it through a PR distribution platform. Include your previous brand name as well as your updated name, address, and phone number because the release will most likely be picked up by multiple sites.

Next, you should promote your new website on social media. Keep up with your social media accounts, update them with current brand-related content, and use them to promote your new name. This is also a good time to invest in paid social campaigns to increase your reach.

If you did an excellent job of promoting your previous brand, your target audience would almost certainly continue to look for it. Buy PPC ads for your former brand name and use the ad copy to spread the word about the rebranding.

For the upcoming months, it will be important to keep an eye on the progress and take action as needed. 

Because data providers take time to update your data, you may notice that listings with your old brand name continue to appear. As a result, you'll have to figure out, claim, and update the old listings on a regular basis. This could go on for months, so it's critical that you catch them early.

It will probably take some outreach attempts to update your links to the most up-to-date brand information. It's best to prioritize updating the most important, relevant, and authoritative links first.

404s and crawl errors are inevitable regardless of how well you prepare. Google Webmaster Tools, fortunately, effectively monitors all of them for you. Keep an eye out for 404s (pages not found) as they appear.

If you notice a significant difference in your rankings or traffic, look into the cause. Expect to see your rankings steadily improve for your new brand name - the time it takes depends on the competitiveness of the term.

You may notice a drop in website traffic for a month or two while search engines index all of your updates. But, a well-executed plan can result in increased visibility and traffic.

Rebranding and merging separate websites is a large and important undertaking, as 88% of online customers do not consider returning to a site after having a negative experience. The entire process calls for the participation of all decision-makers in your business.

You want your customers to understand and recognize your efforts, and your website is the ideal place to do so.

When rebranding your website, SEO is a critical factor to consider. 75% of customers judge a company's credibility based on its website design, making rebranding efforts necessary on a regular basis.

Strategic planning can help you in capitalizing on the opportunity to improve the performance of your website even after it has been redesigned. If you redesign it correctly, you will not lose any rankings or traffic. You’ll improve them. 

At least 73% of businesses invest in design, from product design to website design, in order to separate themselves from their online competitors. When you're competing with many companies online, you need to make your website stand out.

Your online presence can benefit from website rebranding, but you need to make the right decision and take SEO authority into account. SEO keeps your audience engaged and can significantly boost website visibility, which is essential when making big changes like a website rebrand. 

It is important to be consistent with all changes in order to provide a smooth, positive experience for all users. 

Keep a close eye on the results of your rebranding efforts and take needed steps, such as extra promotion or follow-up auditing, if necessary. With careful planning and consideration, you can ensure that all bases are covered.