SEO through a rebrand: the name, the domain, the pages

The pages keep their rankings if the URLs keep their identity. What you lose is the name.

• Branded searches: people keep searching for the old name for months, and the new name has no demand yet.
• Mentions: every article, listing and profile names the old product, and none of them will update themselves.
• The entity: Google connected facts about a company under one name, from your site and third-party sources. A new name starts that connection again.
• Autocomplete and knowledge panels: both follow demand, so both lag.

Non-brand pages are usually the calm part. A guide that ranks for "how to export a CSV" does not care what the company is called, as long as its URL still answers.

1. 1

   Inventory what carries the old name

   Export the pages from Search Console, crawl the site for the name in titles and copy, and list the profiles, listings and articles that mention it. This list is the whole project.

2. 2

   Move the domain, if you are moving it

   One-to-one redirects, every old URL to its equivalent, in one hop. Verify both properties in Search Console and use the change of address tool, which the domain change guide covers in detail.

3. 3

   Rename the site itself

   Titles, h1s, the copy, the logo, the Organization structured data, the site name, the email addresses, the social links. Keep one canonical spelling and use it everywhere.

4. 4

   Ship the brand pages

   The pages a searcher lands on when they look for either name. Detailed in the next section.

5. 5

   Update the mentions you control, then ask for the rest

   Profiles first, then directories and listings, then the articles, in order of the traffic they send.

6. 6

   Watch, weekly, for a quarter

   Brand queries, the redirected URLs, the Page indexing report, and the pages that held your best positions.

Somebody types the old name into Google in six weeks. Decide now what they find.

• The home page, saying the new name and, in one line, that it was the old one.
• An announcement page at a stable URL, explaining the change plainly. It will rank for "old name new name" for years.
• An about page with the company, the people and the history, which is what Google reads for the entity.
• Redirects from any old-name URLs, such as /oldname or /oldname-alternatives, to the announcement or the home page.
• A support or contact page carrying both names, so the people who write to you find it.

Keep the old name in the copy of the announcement and the about page, written naturally, once or twice. Stripping it everywhere is how a rebrand loses the searches it still owns.

This is the slow half, and the half that decides how fast the new name becomes an entity.

You do not need every mention updated. You need the ones people click, and enough of the rest that the new name is the one associated with the product.

There is no published timetable, so watch the shape rather than a date.

• Days to weeks: redirected URLs are recrawled and the new pages are indexed, on a site Google already crawls often.
• Weeks: searches for the old name reach your new pages, because the redirects and the announcement page carry them.
• Months: searches for the new name appear at all, since demand for a name is built by what happens off your site.
• Longer: the knowledge panel and autocomplete follow that demand, not your site.

• The old domain and its redirects: keep them as long as you can, permanently if the registration is cheap. Links pointing at a dead domain are links you have thrown away.
• The old sitemap, listed for a while, so Google recrawls the old URLs and finds the redirects.
• The old property in Search Console, so you can watch the move rather than guess at it.
• The announcement page, at the same URL, for years.
• The old name in the announcement and about copy, written as history rather than as a keyword.

1. 1

   Sample twenty old URLs

   Each should reach its new page in one hop and answer 200. Chains and loops are the usual damage.

2. 2

   Read the Page indexing report on the new property

   Indexed pages should climb as the old ones fall. A reason growing across a template is a decision Google made, not noise.

3. 3

   Filter the Performance report to the old name and the new one

   Two lines, one falling and one rising. That crossover is the rebrand, measured.

4. 4

   Search both names yourself

   In an incognito window, in your main country. Check what ranks for the old name and whether the announcement page is there.