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{"id":420,"date":"2024-04-22T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-04-22T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cherylroll.com\/fix-huge-traffic-drop-after-rebranding-439749\/"},"modified":"2024-04-22T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2024-04-22T12:00:00","slug":"fix-huge-traffic-drop-after-rebranding-439749","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cherylroll.com\/fix-huge-traffic-drop-after-rebranding-439749\/","title":{"rendered":"How to fix a huge traffic drop after rebranding"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rebranding happens when companies grow or face big PR problems. As a marketer and SEO<\/a> expert, you’ll deal with it due to acquisitions, executive decisions or investor demands. Regardless of the reason, traffic will drop when things go wrong.<\/p>\n

But don’t panic. <\/p>\n

Both branded and non-branded traffic can be recovered. It depends on the cause of the loss and what you do next. <\/p>\n

Below are common situations in which we’ve helped clients regain traffic post-rebranding, sorted by situation and traffic drop types. <\/p>\n

I’ve also included non-SEO things to look for so your company can save money, as revenue becomes tight when this happens.<\/p>\n

A quick warning before we jump in<\/h2>\n
If you are launching a new site design with the rebrand, you’re in for a longer time to recover, if you recover at all. Changing names only is easier because you can do press releases, have influencers talk about you or send email\/SMS blasts to customers and make it known who you are now.<\/p>\n
When your customers start searching for the new site and visiting the new domain, along with the proper URL migration implementation, you’ll see the flip normally happen within two days to two weeks, depending on the size of the site and your external brand strength.<\/p>\n
Changing code bases with a new name and URL means search engines must discover the new brand, evaluate it and determine the new user experience. Now, they evaluate how it stacks up to other pages in their indexes. Chances are you’ll lose a bit, even if it is the best because you’re shocking the system too much. <\/p>\n
Avoid rebranding and launching a new website design simultaneously. Give it at least a few months in between.<\/p>\n
Where does the traffic drop come from?<\/h2>\n
The first step to fixing a traffic drop is identifying where it’s coming from. Use analytics for this.<\/p>\n
Go into whatever system you use and check the following with a comparison from the time of the drop in traffic to the same time period before using to determine the actual traffic drops:<\/p>\n
\n
Traffic by channel:\n
\n
Dive deeper if it is social media and see if it is Meta, but Pinterest and TikTok are strong.<\/li>\n
If affiliates and SEO declined, it is likely affiliates are intercepting your own traffic. This isn’t recoverable because you need customers on your own website for them to intercept. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
Next, sort by category to see if one category was penalized or didn’t get built with the new brand, but the others remained strong.<\/li>\n
Branded vs. non-branded campaigns in PPC to see if consumers are using the new branding or if the branding, email, PR, lifecycle and social teams need to ramp up the announcements and adoption.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
These three items help determine the loss of traffic while the other team members are building the new brand and will help give you quick wins to aid recovery. <\/p>\n
Dig deeper: 3 underutilized Google Search Console reports for diagnosing traffic drops<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n
URL migrations and domain changes<\/h2>\n
When migrating a URL, you can do everything right and still see traffic drops while Google crawls and indexes your new pages. <\/p>\n
It is out of your control when Google crawls, indexes and displays your new URLs, but you can be proactive.:<\/p>\n
\n
Make sure Search Console is updated with the new URL, sitemap, etc., and watch the indexing reports.<\/li>\n
Request specific pages that are the most important are getting crawled.<\/li>\n
Share important pages and new content with natural internal links in places Google finds them, like social media. Do not try building backlinks from them, especially if the backlinks are for SEO purposes. <\/li>\n
Check to make sure you have a strong crawl path that helps the end user and search engines find your most important pages easily, including:\n
\n
Menu links<\/li>\n
Breadcrumbs<\/li>\n
Internal links<\/li>\n
Canonical links<\/li>\n
Meta robots<\/li>\n
Sitemaps<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
Double-check that the previous site is still redirecting to the new pages.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
You should be fine if you did your job before the migration, including setting canonical links from the old URL to the new one. <\/p>\n
Take deep breaths. I’ve been doing this for a long time and still feel the same anxiety you do when we flip the switch and wait. It’s normal.<\/p>\n
Get the daily newsletter search marketers rely on.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBusiness email address<\/label><\/p>\n
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Combining stores<\/h2>\nUnlike a URL migration, combining stores comes with unique nuances. Three examples are when:<\/p>\n

Social media<\/h2>\nIn October 2019, a representative from Pinterest spoke at the Plaid St. Conference in Arlington, Virginia and discussed using “domain reputation score” in their algorithm. This is:<\/p>\n