Rebranding on the Web: How to Change Domains Gracefully

From time to time even large successful companies make the decision to rebrand their Web content onto new domains. Search engine optimizers typically roll their eyes and tell you to “be sure to use 301 redirects.” The eye-rolling is due to a pragmatic objection that SEOs raise: why would you want to give up all your hard work on domain A to rebrand on domain B?

Well, the decision is made and you need to get the job done. It’s not that big a deal, actually.

Rebranding usually causes a loss of traffic because you sacrifice search visibility for a period of time that could be a few weeks to several months. The worst case scenario I recall was a rebranding that took over two years because the company failed to check out the new domain name it bought. It had been blacklisted. They were able to clear things up with reinclusion requests to the major search engines.

I have rebranded content many times through the years and I have changed domains more than once. You cannot avoid the inevitable bumps in the road but you can reduce their impact on your marketing strategy.

If we assume you have the luxury of planning the rebrand in advance, the first thing you should do is create a checklist. The rebrand checklist doesn’t involve so many technical details as what should really be common sense details. Here’s the list and I’ll explain the points in detail below.

1. Create a PPC budget for 2-6 months to help you maintain search service referrals.
2. Create a URL map for every content page from the old domain to the new domain.
3. Set up separate hosting for the new domain. Do NOT plan on just replacing the old domain.
4. Incorporate the rebranding into all of your short-term advertising. Tell people what is happening.
5. Set a switchover point for your domain brand in all your long-term advertising. This switchover point is NOT the day your new domain goes live.
6. Hold a weekly status meeting with each department that is affected by the rebranding: sales, customer service, Web development, marketing, and IT (if separate from Web development).
7. Formally announce the rebranding to your employees one week in advance. This is a heads-up, reminder.
8. Create a “call list” of every RESPONSIVE Web site that links to your current domain.
9. Alert the media after the new domain goes live.

Now here’s why you do these things:

PPC Budget - I can show you how to shorten the transition window but I cannot guarantee everything will go smoothly. You should understand that when your old domain is de-indexed, the new domain may not be fully indexed, let alone ranking well for your old terms. Pay-per-click advertising is the fastest, most reliable method of creating visibility for a new domain.

URL Map - One of the biggest mistakes people make when rebranding domains is they change all the page names. If you’re going from five pages to 500 or from 100,000 pages to 2,000 pages, you need to understand where on domain B the people who are looking for domain A content should end up. The map will show you the complexity of the problem. It can be as simple as a spreadsheet that lists all the old page URLs in one column and the corresponding new page URLs in a second column. And don’t be obstinate. Every old page DOES have a corresponding new page. You smooth the transition process by taking control over the correlation process, rather than leaving it to your Error 404 “Document Not Found” solution.

Separate Hosting - The worst mistake you can make in a rebranding operation is to simply take down the old domain, put up the new one, and then redirect your DNS entries to the new domain name. Unbelievably, many companies do exactly this and then their executives become enraged as search visibility and sales drop through the floor. Understand that when you turn off a branded domain, you turn it off. There is no magic “now we’re over here switch.” In other words, plan on leaving the old domain live throughout the transition period.

Short-term advertising - If you have ads going live two weeks before the rebrand and lasting no more than two months after the rebrand, you should use them to tell people, “We are switching from domain A to domain B.” And be sure you have content on domain B other than “coming soon.” Put a contact form up there if nothing else.

Switchover Long-term advertising - Many companies run ad campaigns that last from four months to 12 months. These campaigns are often planned out well in advance and cannot easily be changed at the last moment. Determine where in the pipeline your long-term ad planning is and set the switchover date accordingly. If you have to wait six months after your new domain goes live to get it into your long-term advertising, then you need to keep the old domain live for six months.

Weekly review - Rebranding affects more than the domain shown on your business cards. It has an impact on email, technical support for your Web site, tracking statistics, customer service, sales, you name it. If your company is heavily dependent upon its Web presence, transforming that presence from domain A to domain B throws everyone’s plate into the air. You can make sure the plates land smoothly by involving everyone in the planning process. Exective fiat is the most common reason for failure of implementation when it comes to launching new technology infrastructure. When the boss simply says “do this now” and no one is given time to develop a plan, you can count on things going wrong.

And the boss will never accept responsibility for executive fiat. So meet behind the bosses’ back if that is what it takes (and you’ll probably get recognized for showing some initiative).

Formal announcement to employees - I don’t mean “keep the employees in the dark until the last minute.” In most companies the word gets out among the staff that a change is coming. The purpose of the formal announcement is to launch the countdown. That’s where every department is put on notice to make sure it has its ducks in a row. Internal meetings and memos need to remind people of what is expected of them with respect to the domain rebranding.

Even your purchasing department needs to know that the new domain is going live. Even your plant operations department needs to know that the new domain is going live. If it affects their email, their registrations on vendor sites, or any online activity at all, the domain rebranding has to be incorporated into their daily activities.

Call list of RESPONSIVE sites - If your domain A has been around for any length of time, if you have generated press mentions, if you have linking partners, odds are pretty good there are a lot of links pointing to domain A. You should assume you will never be able to get most of those links changed. Your “call list” should only be for sites that are most likely going to update their links: business partners, business directories, organizations your company belongs to, organizations your executives and employees participate in.

Alert the media - Submitting a press release to PRNewsWire or PRWeb is not the same as “alerting the media.” Sure, submit the press release to an online distribution service, but pick up the phone and call any news organization that has printed two or more articles about your company and say, “Hey, I see you’ve written about us in the past. Just thought you’d like to know we have a new domain.” And if your PR person says, “You know, this would be a great opportunity to invite the media over to the office so we can talk about all the great things we do to help their readers,” give it some thought.

SEO mistakes you can avoid

Most SEOs have now been trained in the 301-redirect dogma. That is, someone comes to a typical SEO and says, “I’ve just changed domain names. Now I’ve lost my search engine traffic. What do I do next?” If the SEO has been reading all the blogs and forums, he or she will immediately say, “Did you 301-redirect the old domain to the new domain?”

After they persuade you to shoot yourself in the foot with a 301-redirect, they’ll tell you to wait six to nine months. Can you live without your search engine traffic for six to nine months? The 301 redirect should happen only after you have achieved significant rankings in the search engines. “But we’re not changing anything other than the domain name,” you object. “What about the duplicate content penalty?”

There is no duplicate content penalty. All that happens with duplicate content is the search engines pick page X over page Y. You can influence which page gets chosen. For example, if all you’re doing is changing the domain and all the content remains in place, then your internal navigation will reflect the domain change. Just let the search engines crawl the old pages that are using the new URLs. They’ll figure it out.

“But won’t our new pages go into the Google Supplemental Index because they are duplicate content?” This is one of the presently biggest and hottest SEO myths circulating on the Web. The days of “the Supplemental Index is where Google puts duplicate content” are over. Google employees Matt Cutts, Vanessa Fox, and Adam Lasnik have all stated in the past few months that (internal, not Toolbar) PageRank is what determines which pages go into the Supplemental Index.

Everyone knows enough about PageRank to be dangerous and ill-informed. But everyone knows enough about PageRank to understand that links are important. What most people don’t yet understand is that Google has reconfigured its search engine so that internal (not Toolbar) PageRank is assigned on what Google deems to be a more sound, rational basis. That is, they are being very, very picky about which pages they assign real PageRank to.

Every domain has one or more pages in the Supplemental Index on Google. In fact, there are many pages in the Supplemental Index that are also in the Main Index. Google will show the Main Index listing rather than the Supplemental Index listing when a page is found in both. All your company needs to do is ensure that sufficient PageRank-passing links are pointed to the new domain to help it get into the Main Index.

As you delink the old domain, the old domain’s page will fall out of the Main Index.

Matt Cutts recently suggested moving 1 directory as a test for one person who was concerned about implementing a rebrand. In the past, Matt suggested you wait until Googlebot and your visitors have found the new domain before turning off an old domain. My advice is to wait a little longer. Make sure that most of the new domain has been found, indexed, and is showing for relevant results.

You can use 301 redirects at a granular, page-by-page level. While that may not seem desirable for a 100,000 page site, many smaller sites can redirect the old content at a measured pace. Updating your old site’s internal navigation is critical. When your internal links point to the new domain, the transition happens more rapidly. That URL map you created will help tremendously in this area.

Many SEOs tell you to submit a few press releases to distribution services to get the new domain crawled. While it’s unlikely that press release distribution is as helpful as it once was, you should use your press releases to guide both people and crawlers to as many destination pages as possible. Don’t just list your new domain’s root URL. List the top-level pages for the most important four or five pages. And don’t include the old URL in any form that becomes a hyperlink.

Wherever you have online resources that let you provide content which includes embedded links, ask those resources to link to the main pages in each important section on the new site. The more links you get for those deeper content pages when you rebrand, the faster the rebranding process takes hold in the search engines.

Design mistakes you can avoid

You may not be in a position to decide against making these mistakes, but if you know your company is going to make them, then you should look into working with an SEO to build brand value for the new domain. The old brand value won’t transfer easily.

1. Change all the page URLs. You can compensate for this by mapping old domain internal links to new domain internal links but reducing or expanding your content slows the process.
2. Change the design format. Going to an all Flash site? Switching to Ajax? Moving from static “.html” pages to dynamic “.php” pages or maybe to “.pdf” pages? If the crawlability and indexability of your content is altered, this type of change is more radical than simply changing page URLs.
3. Embedding content into images. Believe it or not, some companies switch from indexable text content to unindexable graphical content. You will lose search visibility and need to compensate.
4. Eliminating internal navigation. Some companies, when they redesign sites, eliminate static HTML links and go to dynamic menus that cannot be crawled. The only way to fix this mistake is not to make it or to undo it. You need static HTML internal links.
5. Eliminating most highly valued content “because it’s no longer relevant.” Just because it’s no longer relevant doesn’t mean people are not interested in it. Consider building a historical archive that acknowledges the change in focus. Don’t give up all that link love for the sake of Web design.

Although many things can go wrong, many things can go right, too. Your new domain, if accompanied by a new design and new content, may draw a lot of positive feedback. When you make the decision to rebrand, pack as much value into the transition as you can. Load it up with newsworthy value. Make it an event that launches a new era in your search and brand visibility. The more attention people pay to the details of your transition, the sooner you’ll be able to put that domain-level 301 redirect into place and forget about the old domain.

Think of the 301 redirect as the last action you take when you move from your old house to your new house. It’s not the equivalent of turning off the lights. It’s the equlvalent of locking the door and walking away for the last time. Be sure everyone knows where your new home is and how to reach you before you take that final step.