Rebranding occurs when companies grow or face major public relations issues. As a marketer and SEO expert, you will be challenged by acquisitions, executive decisions or investor demands. Regardless of the reason, traffic will drop when things go wrong.
But don’t panic.
Both branded and unbranded traffic can be recovered. It depends on the cause of the loss and what you do afterwards.
Below are common situations where we’ve helped clients recover traffic after rebranding, sorted by situation and type of traffic drop.
I’ve also included non-SEO things to look for so your business can save money, as revenue goes down when this happens.
A quick heads up before we jump in
If you’re launching a new site design with the rebrand, you have more time to recover, if you recover at all. Changing just the names is easier because you can do press releases, get influencers talking about you, or send email/SMS messages to customers and get the word out about who you are now.
When your customers start searching for the new site and visiting the new domain, along with the proper implementation of URL migration, you’ll see the change happen typically within two days to two weeks, depending on the size of the place and the strength of your external brand. .
Changing the code base with a new name and URL means that search engines have to discover the new brand, evaluate it and determine the new user experience. Now, they evaluate how it stacks up to other pages in their indexes. Chances are you’ll lose a little, even if it’s for the best because you’re bumping the system too much.
Avoid rebranding and launching a new website design at the same time. Give it at least a few months in between.
Where is the drop in traffic coming from?
The first step to fixing a traffic drop is to identify where it’s coming from. Use analytics for this.
Go to whatever system you are using and check the following with a comparison from the time of the traffic drop to the same time period before you use it to determine the actual traffic drops:
Traffic by channel: Dig deeper if it’s social and see if it’s Meta, but Pinterest and TikTok are strong. If affiliates and SEO declined, chances are affiliates are intercepting your own traffic. This cannot be recovered because you need customers on your website to intercept them. Then sort by category to see if one category was penalized or failed to build with the new brand, but the others stayed strong. Branded and unbranded campaigns on PPC to see if consumers are using the new brand or if brand, email, PR, lifecycle and social teams need to increase ads and adoption.
These three elements help determine traffic loss while other team members are building the new brand and will help you get quick wins to aid recovery.
Dig deeper: 3 underutilized Google Search Console reports to diagnose traffic drops
URL migrations and domain changes
When you migrate a URL, you can do everything right and watch your traffic drop as Google crawls and indexes your new pages.
It’s out of your control when Google crawls, indexes and displays your new URLs, but you can be proactive:
Make sure Search Console is up-to-date with the new URL, sitemap, etc., and check your indexing reports. Request specific pages that are the most important that are being crawled. Share important pages and new content with natural internal links to places Google finds them, like social media. Do not try to build backlinks from them, especially if the backlinks are for SEO purposes. Check to make sure you have a solid crawl path that helps the end user and search engines easily find your most important pages, such as: Menu Links Navigation Links Internal Links Canonical Links Meta Robots Sitemaps Check that the old site is still redirecting to the new page.
You should be fine if you’ve done your work before the migration, including setting up canonical links from the old URL to the new one.
Breathe deeply. I’ve been doing this for a long time and I still feel the same anxiety you get when we flip the switch and wait. It is normal.
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Combining stores
Unlike a URL migration, store merging has unique nuances. Three examples are when:
Each exists through tabs at the top and has similar or identical products. They are combined into one brand. Stay separate but under the main corporate umbrella and feed off each other’s products causing duplication.
When each exists separately but is connected, follow best practices for linking your brands.
If the products cross over, make sure to match the product descriptions and selling points with the needs of the new audience so that you benefit the customer. When you’re customer-centric, SEO usually comes as a reward.
If everything is being combined into one domain, choose the best experience for the combined user base. This includes copy, images, upsells, PR bars, etc.
Make sure the canonicals of the old sites point to the new site before redirecting and that the redirects are not conflicting. If some pages were thin and should have been pruned, this may be the right time to not redirect them and let them die.
In situations where domains remain the same but branding changes and you link new acquisitions, stay the course with a unique website.
Linking brands through your footer and in some of your content is probably safe. You’ve made it clear that there are associations between them and a search engine would probably expect a company to drive customers to their other brands. You’ll see it on Amazon, Overstock, and Gap.
Affiliates are one of the best opportunities to accelerate URL migration and rebrand traffic recovery. But only if your affiliates aren’t intercepting your own traffic.
Some affiliates intercept customers who already shop on your website using browser extensions to offer cash or coupons, and others appear in SEO and PPC for your brand + coupons. There are also software partners that you install in your own shopping cart to offer customers multiple payment options.
These types depend on you having traffic for them to intercept. They won’t be helpful for your traffic recovery because they don’t send you traffic. It is affiliates who have their own traffic that can help you with recovery.
Have your affiliate manager create a promotional event and series to coincide with the new brand launch. They can offer exclusive access and “leaks” with media, influencers and content creators with blogs and YouTube channels.
If you give them a budget, they can reserve media space on sites that are frequently crawled and have an active reader base or newsletter list. This creates buzz and helps search engines discover your site and new pages more easily.
At the beginning of this article, I mentioned not to build backlinks and I stand by it. Affiliate links are not backlinks and can point to any page on your site.
Affiliates see better conversion rates when they promote specific products and landing pages. If they link from their content to your key converting pages, search engines are more likely to prioritize crawling and indexing those pages. But for this to be successful, your affiliate program must have these value-added partners.
In October 2019, a Pinterest representative spoke at the Plaid St. Conference in Arlington, Virginia and discussed the use of “Domain Reputation Score” in their algorithm. This is:
It is not the same as “Domain Authority” or other similarly branded phrases created by third-party SEO tools. Not used by real search engines.
If you’ve changed domains and Pinterest doesn’t have enough data about it, it could affect your ability to get new and existing pins and maintain traction. (Note: The lecture no longer exists, so I can’t get it.)
This same concept of “brand trust” is believed to be used by other social networking algorithms such as LinkedIn. If your social media followers don’t know or forget you’ve rebranded, they may ignore your new posts. And when your new posts aren’t getting likes, shares, views or comments, reaching and engaging with your audience becomes more difficult.
If the algorithm does not recognize the domain as authoritative or trustworthy, your new content on the platform may not perform well. Some platforms will allow you to change your name and not link to your content, while others will not.
If social traffic is declining from the new brand, it’s time to build trust and send social signals to social algorithms.
Influencer and ambassador accounts that are trusted by the platform can share your new URLs and tag your brands, helping to build trust or partnership. Avoid holding contests, as giveaways lead to fake and low-value fan accounts. Since these accounts don’t interact because they aren’t customers, your reach ends there. Do a couple of product launches just for social media and improve the posts. This encourages people to visit your social channels for the ad. Depending on your industry, you could even give a discount for the first hour to select people to get people to pay attention and interact with your accounts.
Traffic recovery decreases after rebranding
Expect a drop in website traffic when you rebrand. SEO relies on various channels like PR, which attract media attention and links to your new site.
Affiliates also play a role by updating links and directing search engine bots deeper into your site. Social media is also crucial as it signals to search engines that your new domain is trustworthy.
There’s only so much you can do on the search side, so stick to best practices. Websites are just code; code can be fixed, modified and repaired, and traffic can be recovered.
Dig deeper: why traffic is declining despite strong rankings and what to do
The views expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.
