As your business grows, you may encounter growing pains or see that your customer base just isn’t jiving with your current product offerings. This isn’t a bad thing—but it does mean you’ll want to pivot to address those concerns. One of the best ways to do that is to implement a
rebranding campaign. This lets you present your company effectively as a new organization or at least as a new version of the company your customers have come to trust. And one of the key things you’ll need to do when rebranding is to rebrand your website.
Unfortunately, many businesses end up losing their SEO gains when rebranding their sites. Here’s how rebranding can impact your SEO and what you can do to reduce a potential negative impact.
How Rebranding Can Impact Your SEO Efforts
The way that rebranding will impact SEO largely depends on the features you’re changing. But some of the common features that could impact your site’s SEO include the following:
Changes to your keywords, overall clicks, impressions, and organic search rankings
Lost pages without 301 redirects in place
Changes to your domain name that could impact domain authority
That doesn’t mean you can’t rebrand your site. It just means you need to be mindful of how you do it.
How to Rebrand Without Tanking Your SEO Efforts
Though it’s normal to see at least some change in your site’s ranking and performance after a rebrand, there are a few things you can do to mitigate that negative change. Here are a few tips to keep in mind.
Figure Out Your Refresh Goals Before You Start
Before you start your rebranding process, you’ll want to identify the goals for the rebrand. Are you looking to launch an entirely new business? Are you opening a new division with new products and services? Did you recently purchase an existing business but want to put your personal touch on the site? Whatever your reason for the rebrand, make sure you understand what you want to achieve and why. This will help you navigate the process and make sure the site holds up to your vision and your long-term goals.
Choose a Professional Website Design Partner
Rebranding your site can be a major project, and if you’re not careful, you could end up with pages that drive users away or aren’t accessible for those with disabilities. And when the user experience tanks, your rankings and performance may take a hit. Working with an experienced website design team can help you preserve your site’s rankings and reduce the impact that the redesign and rebrand will have on your SEO.
Review and Update Your Existing Content
Rebrands are the perfect time to breathe new life into your content and make sure it aligns with your current goals. But it’s also a great time to update existing content to make sure it speaks to your new brand image. Go through each page on your site and make the necessary updates to all of your main landing pages.
If you have an already developed blog, consider performing a content audit and seeing which pieces are underperforming or not performing at all. You may be able to revise and optimize those pages as part of your brand refresh and capture new organic search traffic. Over time, this can help boost your rankings.
Inspect Your Site’s Hyperlinks
Anytime you’re making significant changes to your site, you can and should go through all of the hyperlinks on your site. Check for any misspellings in the URLs that you’ll want to update, look for broken links, and watch for outdated pages that no longer fit your brand, your services, or your product offerings. If you have any broken links, make sure to either delete those pages or implement the appropriate redirects to your new URLs.
Update Your Google Analytics and Contact Info as Needed
If you’re changing your domain name to fit a new brand name, you’ll need to update it across several platforms. Start by updating your URL in your Google Analytics account. This way, all of the information you’re tracking will be for your current URL, not an outdated website that’s no longer live. You’ll also want to update your URL across your social media pages, Google location pages, and any other platforms you partner with for listings.
Make the Announcement
The last thing you want to do after a rebrand is leave your current customers thinking that you’re no longer in business. Make a plan to announce your rebrand across your social media profiles, through press releases, and more. This publicity can help you reduce the impact your rebrand has on your SEO and makes it easier to retain customers. Your announcements can be simple—just make sure to let people know that your old brand has become
Create an Updated Content Strategy
Once your rebrand is done, you’ll want to create an updated content strategy. This governs the types of blogs you’re creating, the types of landing pages you’ll create, when you’ll post new content, and more. You may need to do additional keyword research to target terms that are true to your new brand and image. But remember, you can always hire an experienced content specialist to handle this for you. Denver Website Designs’ content team can help you create quality content that will help you rank for your target terms. This can help you recover any lost rankings resulting from your rebrand.
Let Denver Website Designs Help
Implementing a rebrand takes time, but the results will likely be well worth the effort. Just remember that you don’t have to manage it all on your own.
Denver Website Designs is here to help, whether you’re looking for a small brand refresh with an updated logo and color scheme or want to completely rebrand your business and revamp your online presence. Contact our team to discuss your vision and see the difference that an experienced website design firm can make in building your business’s online presence.