Summary
The article provides strategies for recovering traffic after rebranding. It advises against simultaneous rebranding and new site design, suggesting analytics to identify traffic drop sources. It discusses URL migrations, domain changes, combining stores, and the role of social media and affiliate promotions. The importance of SEO, PR, and social media in traffic recovery post-rebranding is emphasized.
Common causes of traffic drops post-rebranding include:
- Acquisitions: When a company is acquired, its branding may change, which can lead to a temporary loss of traffic.
- Executive decisions or investor demands: High-level decisions can result in rebranding efforts that may not be immediately embraced by the existing audience.
- Big PR problems: Public relations issues can necessitate a rebrand to distance the company from negative associations.
In all these cases, traffic can drop due to the audience's unfamiliarity with the new brand, changes in search engine indexing, or a lack of coordinated marketing efforts to promote the new brand identity.
To recover both branded and non-branded traffic after rebranding:
- Identify the cause of the traffic loss: Use analytics to understand where the drop is coming from, such as specific channels or campaigns.
- Implement proper URL migration: Ensure that the new domain is properly set up in Search Console, with updated sitemaps and indexing reports monitored.
- Promote the new brand: Use press releases, influencer partnerships, and email/SMS blasts to announce the rebrand to customers.
- Interlink brands: If combining stores or managing multiple brands, use best practices for interlinking and focus on customer-first content.
- Leverage affiliates: Work with affiliates who have their own traffic to promote the new brand and help with recovery.
- Utilize social media: Build trust and send social signals to algorithms by engaging with influencers and boosting product launches on social platforms.
By addressing these areas, you can create a strategy to regain lost traffic and help your audience adapt to the new brand.
Avoiding simultaneous rebranding and new website design is important because:
- It can overwhelm search engines and users with too many changes at once, leading to a longer recovery time for traffic.
- Search engines need time to discover and evaluate the new brand and user experience, which can be complicated by a new design.
- It's easier to manage and track the impact of changes when they are staged separately.
By giving each significant change its own space and time, you can more effectively manage the transition and minimize traffic disruption.
During a URL migration, take the following steps to minimize traffic loss:
- Update Search Console: Make sure the new URL and sitemap are submitted to Google Search Console.
- Request indexing: Ask Google to crawl the most important pages first.
- Share content: Use natural internal links and share important pages on social media.
- Optimize crawl paths: Ensure that menu links, breadcrumbs, internal links, canonical links, meta robots, and sitemaps are all directing correctly.
- Implement redirects: Double-check that the old site is redirecting to the new pages properly.
By carefully managing these aspects of a URL migration, you can help search engines understand and index your new site more quickly, aiding in the recovery of traffic.
Social media can be used to recover traffic after a rebrand by:
- Building domain reputation: Engage with your audience to build trust and send positive signals to social media algorithms.
- Collaborating with influencers: Partner with trusted influencer and ambassador accounts to share your new URLs and tag your brands.
- Boosting product launches: Create social media-exclusive product launches and boost posts to draw attention to your channels.
- Avoiding low-value tactics: Steer clear of contests that attract fake accounts, as they can harm engagement and reach.
By focusing on these strategies, you can increase the visibility of your new brand on social platforms and encourage your audience to engage with your content, helping to drive traffic back to your site.
