Rebranding gets a bad name when it comes to SEO—mostly because you’re terrified of losing what you’ve built up (and Google isn’t always the most forgiving). But a rebrand doesn’t mean you’re losing all your SEO. At least, it doesn’t if you’re doing it right.

Here’s the thing: A rebrand isn’t inherently bad for your site or your SEO, it’s usually the opposite. Rebrands are opportunities to find best-fit keywords, double-down on keywords you’re already ranking for, and improve your user (and brand) experience.

All things that help your overall SEO. Rebranding only “hurts” your SEO when you skip steps (usually the steps you didn’t know existed in the first place). 

And maybe it’s because I just completed my own rebrand and wanted to preserve my SEO or maybe it’s because I’ve helped more than a few business owners try (and succeed) in saving their SEO this year, but this is everything YOU need to know about rebranding and your SEO:

Does Rebranding Hurt Your SEO?

The short answer? No. A rebrand is not guaranteed to hurt your website’s SEO. But can a rebrand hurt your SEO? Absolutely. 

The struggle with a rebrand is that you’re forcing Google (and other search engines) to give your website another look. A good, in-depth look at your website. Which means any of the errors, broken links, and outdated content that you’ve gotten away with because it hasn’t been re-crawled since 2016 is going to get Google’s attention—and if it’s not fixed, you’re going to lose Google’s trust. 

The more pages that lose trust, the more the pages that are in good health get side-eyed by Google and lose their rankings (Google doesn’t want to recommend a site with poor user experience).

You could also lose your SEO if you’re doing a full rebrand, AKA a rebrand that’s not just visuals or copy, but one that changes your offers and your core audience. But in these cases, it’s usually a good thing to lose your old SEO and get a fresh start.

How to Save Your Site’s SEO When You Rebrand

While your actual rebrand process might look completely different from your neighbors—maybe you’re just rebranding your design, or you’re changing all your offers—what you’re considering for your SEO is the same. Mainly because you’re aiming for the same goal: to put your website in the best health and condition possible.

And maybe it’s because I’m an overachiever, but if you’re already in the process of a rebrand, now is also a good time to start getting more from your SEO and improving your rankings (not just preserving). 

Here’s how to save your site’s SEO when you rebrand:

Step #1 → Plan Your Sitemap

It sounds more technical than it actually is, but you should pull your website’s sitemap and determine which pages are staying and which are going. Focus on the core pages for now, ignore your blog posts (we’ll get to that later).

Pull the page list into a Google Sheet or Airtable base to track what’s doing what and going where. If you’re changing the URL structure of your page, now is the time to mark it down. If you see pages that shouldn’t still be up, note it. 

You’re creating your working list to check-in on post-launch!

Step #2 → Audit Your Website

Highly recommend investing in an SEO tool if you’re not already, but you have to audit your website’s health and its performance. Rebranding is when all the little issues you didn’t think were actual issues love to show their ugly heads.

I’ve had clients with 300+ blog posts floating in the background with 100+ broken links, clients with pages published and live for offers that haven’t existed for years, or copy that barely mentions what they do but worked because there wasn’t anyone at the time to compete with it. 

Make a list of the issues and fix what you can, you want to bring your overall issues as close as possible to zero.

Step #3 → Track What Your Ranking for 

AKA check in your Google Search Console to find the keywords you’re trying to preserve your rankings for and the page that’s ranking for them. Usually it’s in this section you realize you’re ranking for keywords on one page, but not another or vice versa.

For the pages with ranking keywords you’re trying to preserve, check where and how those keywords are mentioned in the page metadata and copy. You’ll want to maintain those mentions—and if there’s not much (or any), introduce them into your copy.

Step #4 → Research New Keywords

And find new opportunities. For the pages that don’t currently have a ranking keyword you want to save, research new keywords to support the ones sticking around. You need one primary keyword per page, no repeats. 

Choose wisely, cause this is the step that will help you improve your SEO, not just preserve.

Learn more about finding the just-right keyword for your main pages during a rebrand with Search Party, the keyword research mini-course here.

Step #5 → Fix the Problems, Pre-Plan the Strategy

With a rebrand, you need to fix the problems as you notice them (before launch, preferably) and pre-plan your SEO strategy. This means mapping out what you’re adding as the SEO page titles, meta descriptions, and even your images if you can. The more plug-and-play your strategy is, the easier it will be to implement.

Everything should be implemented as much as possible before your rebrand goes live. However, if you need to add a few things after it’s live—that’s fine. Just don’t submit your sitemap for re-indexing until you’ve added everything!

Submitting your sitemap is almost like forcing a crawl. With a rebrand, Google will notice you’ve made changes and recrawl, but only after it’s noticed. Submitting a sitemap is telling vs. letting it be discovered.

Step #6 → Track, Review, and Update

You will probably see a dip in your analytics, and that’s okay!! It usually takes a few days to weeks to balance back out. You may also see no change, it’s all based on your current SEO, how big of a change your rebrand created, and how seamlessly you re-optimized your site for SEO.

But keep an eye on it and if you need to make changes, wait to do so after 30 days. And after you make those changes, give it six weeks to settle. Because SEO is slow, making changes too quickly can negate any good your updates may do.

And don’t stop reviewing your data just because your site is doing okay—you never know when Google might release an update or something weird happens. Schedule a quarterly review with yourself, grab a coffee and just explore your Google Search Console and how your site is performing.

What Happens to Your Blog When You Rebrand?

Honestly, your blog is the most annoying part of a rebrand. It’s the thing that can make or break your site’s SEO performance, but is almost always the cause of issues, too. When you’ve had your website for so long, your blog posts are almost “grandfathered” into your rankings and a rebrand flips it on its head.

It’s even worse with a full name change, where you’ll have to update how you reference your brand within your content, too. 

If you’re rebranding and you have a blog, and SEO is important to you, dedicate time specifically for cleaning up your content for re-launch. Trust me, you need it.

Rebranding with a Domain Change vs. Same Domain

Not even if you’re changing your name (which has some things to consider), changing your domain can really fudge your SEO. See, everything for your website is linked to its URL. It’s how Google (and other search engines) assign the ranking.

Even slightly changing your URL from something on your own domain, like https://yourwebsite.com/url → https://yourwebsite.com/new-url can impact SEO (redirects don’t inherently change SEO, but similar to rebrands, they cause a page to get re-crawled which can impact your SEO). When you change your domain, you majorly change your URL, which can change your SEO even more.

TL;DR if you’re rebranding your business and changing your domain name, you’re more at-risk for negatively impacting your SEO in comparison to rebranding, but keeping the same brand name/domain name.

Can You DIY Your Rebrand’s SEO?

Yes, you can—but I don’t recommend it. DIY-ing your rebrands SEO means you’re managing your SEO on top of literally everything else and if there’s something you don’t know, you’re spending that much more time and energy trying to figure it out.

Working with an SEO to help with your SEO saves time and, with rebrands, you’re usually working together for a time period—not just one-off. You have someone monitoring your search performance and making adjustments as needed, and not just when you notice or have time.

The whole point of a rebrand is to support where you’re at now in your business, not do more of the things you don’t want to do. 

If you’re ready to trust your support and preserve your SEO during your rebrand, it’s what I’m here for. Learn more about our SEO services for service providers here (and click here if you’re an online shop!).