Your website during a rebrand

Decide whether the domain changes at all

A rebrand does not always require a new domain. If the existing address still makes sense, keeping it removes the largest risk in the whole project at no cost.

Where the name change makes the old address misleading, a new domain is justified. That is a real reason. Wanting a tidier address is not.

Our page on one business, one domain covers why running both indefinitely is the worst of the available options.

Audit before you change anything

List every page address, every profile, every directory entry and every place the old name appears. That list is the project, and building it is more work than the rebrand itself.

Include the things that are easy to forget. Email signatures, invoice templates, vehicle signage, review platforms, supplier listings and any printed material still circulating.

Our page on auditing a site covers assembling the website half. The off-site half usually takes longer and matters just as much.

Search for your old name and see what comes back. Directory entries, old articles, supplier pages and forum mentions all surface that way, and most of them will not be in any list you kept.

The order that protects you

Change the visible branding on the existing site first. New name, new look, same addresses. That lets customers adjust while nothing technical is at risk.

Then move the domain if you are moving it, with every old address mapped to a new one and redirected permanently in a single hop.

Then update profiles and listings, starting with the ones that send you the most traffic. Our page on redirects covers the mechanics of the middle step.

The rebrand checklist

This is the list we would work through. The order matters, and the items people skip are consistently the last four rather than the first three.

• Every page address recorded before anything changes
• New branding live on the existing domain first
• Every old address mapped to a new one
• Permanent redirects, one hop, no chains
• Every profile and listing updated
• The old domain renewed for several years
• A page explaining the change, kept live

Explain the change publicly

Publish a page saying what the business was called, what it is called now, and that it is the same business. Keep it live for years rather than removing it after a month.

That page answers the question customers actually have, which is whether they are dealing with the same people. It also helps a search engine or an answer engine connect the two names.

Our page on entity clarity covers why that connection matters, and a rebrand is the moment a business is most likely to be confused with somebody else.

Keep the old name in the text of that page rather than only in an image. It is the only way anything reading the site can connect the two names, and an image of a logo states nothing.

Keep the old domain

Renew it for as long as you reasonably can. Links pointing at it will keep arriving for years, and letting it lapse hands your accumulated visibility to whoever registers it next.

Keep the redirects live on it rather than parking it. A parked domain wastes every link still pointing at the old address.

And watch for anything that breaks. A redirect that stops working two years later is invisible unless somebody is checking occasionally.

What to expect afterward

Some movement in search results is normal even when everything is done correctly. Search engines have to relearn the association between the business and the new name.

Brand searches take longest, because people keep searching for the old name for years. That is exactly what the explanation page and the redirects are for.

Do not react in the first fortnight. Our page on the coverage report covers what an ordinary settling period looks like before it is worth investigating.

Tell your existing customers directly as well. A rebrand that reaches them through a search result is unsettling, and a short message beforehand prevents most of the confused calls that follow.