Rebranding - Search Engine Implications

[curly_clare]

Hi,

Having secured high search engine visibility and rankings for an existing domain my client now wants to rebrand (change company name) and change their domain name to incorporate the new brand name.

obviously, if we were to ditch the current domain name in favour of the new one we would lose all of our inbound links, rankings etc.. and would need to start from scratch.

I have recommended that my client keeps the original domain and incorporates marketing messages on the current site to advise visitors of the rebranding. The new domain will simply be redirected to the exisitng one.

I am just interested on hearing peoples views on this, where my recommendations right or is there another way around this problem?

Many thanks in advance.

[Mohamed_E]

You should be able to put a 301 redirect permanent from the old domain to the new. This will allow the inbound links to the old domain to count for the new one while you painfully contact webmasters and ask them to change the link.

[curly_clare]

Many thanks Mohamed,

So what we are saying here is;

The best way to secure your rnakings when changing an url is to:

1. Employ the 301 permanent redirect on the old domain
2. Ask all inbound links to change the url to the new domain.

Is there anyway of avoiding point 2? We have thousands of inbound links and this would take up so many man hours.

Many thanks.

[Mohamed_E]

In theory the redirect permanent will work forever. But if somehow the next webmaster decides to save a few pennies and get rid of the "useless" old domain name ...

I share your pain, and would love to hear what others may have to say.