5 replies to this topic

[seokiwi]

I am an avid reader of High Rankings® Advisor. I would really appreciate any input from users with a sticky issue I am facing.

Please forgive me for using generic brand names and URLs.

I have just joined a company (I will call it ABC with website www.abc.com) as the in-house SEM specialist. ABC has been around for 5 years in the car hire industry and they have built an excellent brand name.

But there are new competitors springing up who are deriving mileage by branding themselves as variations of the ABC brand name and we are not happy with this situation.

We have decided to rebrand ourselves as XYZ and are going to build a new website called www.xyz.com (new domain registered in Jan 2007)

Our company is going to launch the new branding under the name xyz in the next 6-8 weeks in the real world. All our cars will have the new brand name and so will our banners and hoardings and all other promotional material.

abc.com is ranking well in organic search and it has about 20,000+ backlinks. It is not easy to just switch from the old brand to the new brand just like that in the cyber world.

I have proposed the following to my boss so as to not upset the apple cart with abc.com and at the same time build up the new xyz.com (This idea appeared in one of the High Ranking newsletters)

1)Retain the value of abc.com and keep maintaining it
2)Build up xyz.com from scratch over the next 3 months
3)If anyone searches for the brand xyz, have a 302 redirect from xyz.com to abc.com (Would it be better to have a spiel on xyz.com asking users to click on the link to abc.com?)
4)Start building links to xyz.com till the ageing filter on xyz.com is removed
5)Once the listings from xyz.com start appearing independently for searches (maybe in 9-12 months time), have a 302 redirect from abc.com to xyz.com so as to get the backlinks value and rankings value from abc.com into the new xyz domain
6) Another 3 months down the line, issue a 301 redirect from abc.com to xyz.com

What is your advice? Do you think this approach is right?

Meanwhile my boss wants to change the name abc to xyz where ever it occurs on the current abc.com site. The page title, meta description etc will still be unchanged (remain under the old brand name) but the content and banners on the site will show the new brand xyz. I have suggested a rider wherein whenever abc is encountered, it can be changed to "xyz (formerly abc)"

Do you think this is a good idea or will the search engines be flummoxed by this temporary change in branding on the current abc.com site?

The branding consultant meanwhile feels the new branding will be totally unique and have a great attitude which is totally different from that portrayed by current abc.com site I am quite overwhelmed by this.

In your opinion, what would be the best way to go about it?

I would sincerely appreciate your view on this whole thing and what the best way would be to go about it.

Anticipating your reply eagerly,
Regards
seokiwi

[Randy]

Well, what you laid out in your steps should help to limit the pain somewhat. But it's a lot of leg work to go through.

If possible wouldn't it be better to simply make the competitors stop using your brand? There are legal channels you can pursue to do this, especially if it's a registered trademark. Otherwise you're going to end up doing it again when they realize that you've switched the brand a few years down the road.

If they keep doing the same sort of thing you're going to have to face that legal side of things eventually. Because every time you rebrand yourself just because of competitors you're going to be giving them a little bit of an advantage in catching you.

[seokiwi]

Hi Randy,
THe problem with the current abc brand name we have currently built is is that it is too generic and it is not trademarked. The new brand xyz has been trademarked. So we will definitely pursue the legal angle in future for the new brand and we will have stronger grounds to do so because of the trademark issue.

But in the interim, till the ageing filter is removed, would it be advisable to change the brand name abc wherever it occurs in the current site to xyz both in graphics and content throughout the site? Will this confound the search engines and upset the current good rankings enjoyed by abc.com? I have proposed to Management that wherever abc occurs in content, it has to be changed to the rider xyz (formerly abc)

What is your opinion on this? WIll we lose out in the interim before xyz.com manages to come up by itself in a year's time high in the rankings?

Thanks for your input
Regards
seokiwi

Well, what you laid out in your steps should help to limit the pain somewhat. But it's a lot of leg work to go through.

If possible wouldn't it be better to simply make the competitors stop using your brand? There are legal channels you can pursue to do this, especially if it's a registered trademark. Otherwise you're going to end up doing it again when they realize that you've switched the brand a few years down the road.

If they keep doing the same sort of thing you're going to have to face that legal side of things eventually. Because every time you rebrand yourself just because of competitors you're going to be giving them a little bit of an advantage in catching you.

[Randy]

But in the interim, till the ageing filter is removed, would it be advisable to change the brand name abc wherever it occurs in the current site to xyz both in graphics and content throughout the site? Will this confound the search engines and upset the current good rankings enjoyed by abc.com? I have proposed to Management that wherever abc occurs in content, it has to be changed to the rider xyz (formerly abc)

I guess the question becomes How much traffic do you get from people searching for ABC??

If you get a lot of this sort of traffic it might be dangerous to flat out change it all over. In this case I would probably try changing it out on a few pages first to see if there is any negative effect before jumping in with both feet.

On the other hand, if you get no or very little traffic via ABC searches there's really nothing to lose.

[seokiwi]

We do get a lot of searches with the brand abc in the search phrase. In fact, the highest number of searches in the past six months was the phrase
abc rentals

If I were to change a few pages at a time which is the best thing to do under the circumstances, am I introducing inconsistency into the web site content? Will it also mislead the users? There are also 20,000+ backlinks pointing to abc.com It is not going to be easy

Thanks for the input Randy. Appreciate it very much

[Randy]

Well, instead of flat out changing things you could always try a bit of copywriting magic to stand a better chance of holding your current positions. For example, something along the lines of changing text from saying something like:

ABC Rentals provides this and that and the other ...

to

XYZ Rentals, formerly known as ABC Rentals, provides this and that and the other ...

On the larger issue, trust me I know how squirrely some competitors can be. I have this one guy who attempts to mirror everything I do with one of my sites. He doesn't copy my text exactly anymore since I had his host shut him down once a year or so ago after having already contacted him directly a couple of times before about copyright infringement, but it's not like he's writing anything original either. His content is that close.

He watches what I'm doing (or what he can see of what I'm doing) pretty closely too. Just a few weeks ago I put in place some new pricing. Lo and behold he changed the pricing on his site literally within 24 hours after I'd raised my prices. I guess he wanted to match what I was charging.

His only problem with this kind of mimicking?

He had also joined my site a few years back and I knew it was him even though he tried to hide this small fact. I noticed when looking up his username in my log files that he apparently had gotten a static IP number somewhere along the way. Or at least his IP number had not changed in forever and a day according to the IP number he used when logging into the members area to see what I was up to.

So after I saw him change his prices that quickly I decided to have a little fun and put a <cough>one person mod_rewrite instruction</cough> into place. It didn't really change any of the content. It just gave him a totally different amount compared to what everyone else saw whenever he went to any page that showed my pricing.

So now his site's pricing is 20% of what it should be because he apparently thinks being a copycat is a good thing.

Edited by Randy, 08 March 2007 - 08:19 PM.