Changing business name from keyword to brand name, what are the effects on SEO?
-
I think it's best to give you an example to illustrate what I'm asking here.
Current Brand Name: Keyword Driven Brand Name (keyworddrivenbrandname.com)
New brand Name: KDBN (kdbn.com)
What will the effects of this change be. I'm slightly worried that we have lots of links with the anchor text "Keyword Driven Brand Name" and we rank very well for terms like "Keyword Driven" and "Brand Name".
I guess what I'm asking is, do we need to go and change all those anchors to KDBN and will this upset our search rankings. Or do we leave the existing anchors? But will Google see this as over-optimised anchor text and penalise our website?
Decisions decisions!
Also, should we leave the old brand name in our title tags, at least for the transitional period, i.e.
KDBN | Targeted Keyword | Keyword Driven Brand Name
Any help with this would be really appreciated,
Many thanks
-
That's a pickle!
Yeah, whatever you choose I might suggest making the changes gradually. Introduce elements one at a time instead of all at once. In this way, you might be able to preserve some of your established link equity and relevancy signals.
-
Thanks for your reply Cyrus,
Further to your advice, here's another problem, whilst re-branding we're also looking to build a completely new website to market the new brand. The new website will have a completely different structure and mostly different content.
Because of this, it's going to be hard to keep elements the same. Would you recommend changing the domain name over first and leaving the existing site on the new domain name for a few months and then updating the site to the new design? i.e. redirecting old pages to new
Many thanks!
-
While I can't say for sure, I'd say you're safer off keeping any existing anchors as-is. Changing existing links could have unintended consequences, and you don't know what the effect will be of keeping them the same.
As for your title tags and other site elements, if you are doing a domain migration, it's best to keep as many elements exactly the same as possible - at least during and in the first couple months after the transition. In this case, I'd ask if your visitors will recognize the new brand name, and if it makes sense to keep the old keywords.
-
If you have two separate domain names, I would continue to keep them separate and not redirecting one to another. The fundamental strategy I would choose is to gradually move company specific content to brandname.com and keep educational, promotional content on keywordname.com so use that as your thought leadership platform with very relevant links to brandname.com.
over a period you will see people searching for your brand directly going to main company website. People looking for your content will first go to keywordname.com, get educated and most likely gopto brandname.com. By creating your own brandname.com is a great idea since it will create your own traffic stream which is a great competitive advantage. A pure keywordbased domain name is vulnerable to a better SEO execution by competition so can't last forever.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Multi-Store SEO
I am currently developing a website which will have a multi-store function, i.e. one for US & ROW customers and one for UK & EU customers. The domain names will be along the lines of: Original domain: www.website.com UK & EU domain: eu.website.com US & ROW domain: us.website.com When a customer visits the website they will be redirected to one or the other depending on their location. Can anyone see any problems which this may cause in respect to SEO? I know there may be a duplicate content issue here also, how should I best deal with this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moon-boots0 -
How to get more keyword ideas
I am trying to get more keyword ideas for one of my project. For example the seed keyword is computer virus and the results which i get is keywords related to the phrase computer virus such as virus in computer , virus threats but actually i am trying to get search details on actual threat names or types of viruses and i expect output such as malware, trojan etc.. ( Currently using ad words keyword planner to fetch keyword data ) Is there any way to achieve this ? Even if i use "types of computer viruses" as seed keyword i am not getting the types of viruses people searching for instead i get keywords ideas such as computer viruses, computer threats etc... ? Can somebody suggest a solution ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NortonSupportSEO0 -
Would changing the file name of an image (not the alt attribute) have an effect of on seo / ranking of that image and thus the site?
Would changing the file name of image, not the alt attribute nor the image itself (so it would be exactly the same but just a name change) have any effect on : a) A sites seo ranking b) the individual images seo ranking (although i guess if b) would be true it would have an effect on a) although potentially small.) This is the sort of change i would be thinking of making : ![Red ford truck](2554.jpg) changed to ![Red ford truck](6842.jpg)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sam-P0 -
Changing Domain / Site Name - An SEO Nightmare?
My company will be changing its name and moving to a new domain in about a month. What can I do from an SEO perspective to get ready for the big move? Do I just need to 301 redirect all my URLs to their new corresponding pages? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W0 -
SEO for eCommerce?
I'm working on a game plan for the on-page optimization for a growing e-commerce site (https://www.boutine.com) and I'm wondering if anyone has any experience with similar projects. Specifically, how to get the most SEO value out of product and category pages. Thanks in advance! -Adam
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | boutine0 -
What Should I Do With My URL Names?
I release property on my blog each week, and it has come to the point we will get property in the same area as we have had in the past. So, I name my URL /blah-blah-blah-[area of property]/ for the first property in that area right. Now I get a different property in that same area and the URL will have to be named /blah-blah-blah-[area of property]-2/. Now I'm not sure if this is a major issue or not, but I'm sure there must be a better way than this, and I don't really want to take down our past properties - unless you can give me good reason too, of course? So before I start getting URLs like this: /blah-blah-blah-[area of property]-2334343534654/ (well, ok, maybe not that bad! But you get my point) I wanted to see what everyones opinion on it is 🙂 Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JonathanRolande0 -
Keyword Self-Cannibalization
Hi, Happy Friday! I was advised to look at the SEO strategy of a UK SEO company and copy a technique they used, however, I have doubts that this technique is any good. So mydomain.com targets My Domain For my main keyword phrase, I was told to place a link to a newly created inner page in my footer, targeting the main keyword and on this page, create unique content which points back to my homepage. Now I also have mydomain.com/my-domain.php which has a link to mydomain.com with anchor text My Domain. Based on the SEOMoz reports, this now seems to be Keyword Self Cannibalisation and I think that it is diluting link juice and the value of my SEO on my homepage for this term rather than helping. Can you advise if this technique is wrong?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tdsnet0 -
Should I Decrease My Keyword Density
On SEOmoz's On-page tool it is telling me that I should cut the number of phrases for a specific key phrase almost in half, from 27 to 15. However my keyword density for this page is only 1.68%. I would have thought that was a good keyword density to have, if not even a little higher. Should I trust the tool and decrease this keyword phrase? Would love to hear from anyone with experience in this. If you want to see the page it is http://www.mybluedish.com/. The key phrase is "satellite internet"
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MyNet0