SEO 101 Episode 488 - Google's November Update, Search Console Recommendations, Rebranding Tips, and SEO Strategies

Summary

SEO 101 Podcast Summary: Episode 488 - Google's November Update, Search Console Recommendations, Rebranding Tips, and SEO Strategies

Hosted by Ross Dunn and Scott Vanack from WMR.FM, Episode 488 of "SEO 101" dives deep into the latest developments in SEO, offering valuable insights and actionable strategies for both beginners and seasoned marketers.

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1. Introduction

Ross Dunn, CEO of Step Forth Web Marketing, welcomes listeners to Episode 488 of SEO 101 alongside his co-host, Senior SEO Specialist Scott Vanack. The episode promises a comprehensive exploration of recent SEO updates, practical recommendations, and essential tips for website rebranding.

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2. WordPress Plugin Popularity and Insights (00:10 - 03:51)

Scott Vanack introduces findings from a Search Engine Journal report by Roger Monti, which analyzed 140,000 WordPress sites to determine the most used plugins.

• Yoast SEO tops the list with a 58% adoption rate. Scott remarks, “We use it for, I think every single WordPress client… almost, yeah, 58%.” (00:33)

• Redirection follows with 26.85% usage. Ross adds, “We use it all the time for speeding up our sites.” (01:46) Despite past issues with the Redirection plugin causing site crashes, Scott notes, “I haven't seen any issues from it in a long time now.” (01:50)

• Other notable plugins include WP Rocket (18%), Rank Math (11.62%), Imagify (5%), and All in One SEO (5%). Scott shares a cautionary tale about a client who activated All in One SEO alongside Yoast, leading to site ranking crashes due to conflicting settings. “If you're a client and you want to screw up, that's cool, but the new price is a bottle of whiskey to apologize.” (02:47)

• Schema.org Structured Data sees just under 2% adoption, highlighting the diverse methods users employ to add markup.

Ross concludes this segment by noting the data source's limitations, emphasizing it reflects Kinsta's hosting clientele: “If you are finding yourself affected as usual, hold tight until it's over…” (04:24)

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3. Google’s November Core Update (04:24 - 06:07)

The hosts discuss the ongoing rollout of Google's November Core Update, first introduced in Episode 486. Both note significant volatility in search rankings, with many users experiencing fluctuations.

• Scott advises patience: “If you are finding yourself affected as usual, hold tight until it's over because whatever you've lost could easily come back before they're done.” (04:55)

• Ross reflects on the frequency of updates, suggesting Google may transition to more continuous, less noticeable changes: “It feels like the time is coming where we just won't even have core updates.” (04:55)

• They speculate on future developments, including potential impacts from AI innovations like SearchGPT: “That's when SearchGPT really takes off next year.” (06:13)

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4. Google Search Console Recommendations (06:07 - 07:55)

Ross introduces Google's new feature in Search Console that provides optimization opportunities and suggested actions for organic search improvement. Announced on November 26, these recommendations are intended to guide website enhancements.

• Scott humorously notes the vagueness of update frequencies: “I love that regular basis. Like is it daily, weekly, annually, who knows? It's a mystery.” (06:52)

• Upon reviewing client data, Scott found minimal actionable recommendations: “I only saw two… one like I saw multiples of these two. One was it said a query recently got fewer impressions than usual.” (07:08)

Ross and Scott ponder whether the feature is fully rolled out or if their clients are in strong SEO standing: “Maybe it's not a hundred percent rolled out because those are the only two types I could find.” (07:55)

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5. Google’s Hotel Search Test in the EU (08:05 - 10:25)

Scott details Google's experimental changes to hotel search queries in Germany, Belgium, and Estonia as a response to the EU's Digital Markets Act.

• Google is testing the removal of hotel-specific searches, limiting results to basic "10 blue links" for non-branded queries: “Google is testing bare bones hotel search queries being removed in three European countries.” (08:05)

• Gary Ells of Search Engine Journal clarifies it's a temporary test with no immediate actions required: “They expect it to go back to normal.” (09:24)

• Ross adds context, emphasizing that this change targets generic hotel searches rather than specific branded ones: “In the Future… it's not impacting a search for a specific hotel.” (09:24)

• The hosts express mixed feelings about the reduction in search result richness, acknowledging Google's compliance with regulatory pressures: “I can't imagine how much they dislike having to share any of this information… but they wouldn't be making the money they are.” (05:25)

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6. Top Google Search Terms and User Behavior (12:18 - 17:15)

Scott presents findings from a SparkToro study revealing that the top 148 search terms account for approximately 37.5 billion of Google's 250 billion monthly searches.

• Top 10 Search Terms:

  1. YouTube
  2. Gmail
  3. Amazon
  4. Facebook Chat
  5. GPT
  6. Google Translate
  7. WhatsApp
  8. Web
  9. Google Maps
  10. Pornhub

• Scott observes, “People would just know by now. But I guess not. It comes down to it. If there's one thing you can rely on, humanity. It's laziness.” (13:26 - 13:34)

• Ross concurs, highlighting the convenience factor, especially on mobile devices: “Sometimes you gotta click the little button to go to a different screen on your keypad.” (13:50)

• Search Intent Breakdown:

  • Informational: 51%
  • Navigational: 33%
  • Commercial: 14.5%
  • Transactional: 0.69%

Ross clarifies search intent categories, ensuring listeners understand the distinctions: “Navigational would be how to get to a certain place, I assume.” (15:02)

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7. Advice from John Mueller on Ranking After Rebranding (17:14 - 20:23)

Ross shares a query addressed by John Mueller, Google's Webmaster Trends Analyst, regarding a client's struggle to rank for their newly rebranded domain, theweddingcompany.com, after changing from betterhalf.ai.

• John Mueller's Insight: “This is a competitive space and the name is quite generic. Just because you call your company something doesn't mean it'll show up on top in search like that.” (17:37 - 17:51)

• Scott emphasizes the complexity of rebranding in competitive niches: “It used to be so easy… Those days are over. It takes a lot of time after rebranding.” (18:20)

• Ross reinforces the challenges, comparing it to the outdated Exact Match Domain strategy and highlighting the importance of maintaining SEO efforts post-rebrand: “It's not that simple anymore.” (19:40)

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8. Essential Rebranding Tips for SEO Success (20:23 - 32:12)

Drawing from their experiences, Ross and Scott provide a detailed guide for executing a successful website rebrand without sacrificing SEO rankings.

Key Tips Include:

1. Initial Assessments and Backups:

   • Crawl Current Site: Use tools like Screaming Frog to export all site data, ensuring you have a comprehensive record of titles, descriptions, and URLs. (20:34)
   • Export Ranking Data: Utilize Semrush to understand which pages are performing well and need to be preserved. (20:34)
   • Full Site Backup: Ensure a complete backup is in place before making any changes. Ross warns, “Make sure your backups work. Yeah, it's who thinks to do that? Nobody.” (25:37)

2. Content Preservation:

   • Maintain High-Performing Pages: Avoid removing content that drives significant traffic. Ross shares, “If you've got pages on your site that are doing awesome, try to make sure you get that content on the new site.” (21:00)

3. Managing Internal and External Links:

   • Update Internal Links: Ensure all internal links point to the new domain. Scott suggests using database find-and-replace methods for efficiency. (22:36)
   • Redirect Old URLs: Implement 301 redirects from the old domain to the new one to preserve link equity and user experience.

4. Verification and Tools:

   • Google Change of Address Tool: After setting up redirects, use this tool to inform Google of the domain change, ensuring a smoother transition. (28:24)

5. Analytics and Search Console:

   • Transfer Tracking Codes: Ensure Google Analytics and Search Console are correctly set up on the new domain. Ross advises, “Make sure you have access from the very start.” (30:21)
   • Ownership Control: Ross emphasizes the importance of owning these accounts to prevent access issues during transitions. (31:34)

6. Testing and Launch:

   • Test Backups: Regularly test your backups to ensure they can be restored successfully. (25:18)
   • Remove Site Blocks: Verify that no accidental blocks (like robots.txt restrictions) are in place post-launch to prevent ranking drops. (29:24)

Real-World Examples:

• Client Case Studies: Both hosts recount scenarios where improper rebranding led to significant traffic loss, reinforcing the necessity of meticulous planning and execution. Scott mentions, “We lost a ton of authority and traffic… we could do with their site.” (23:22)

• Success Stories: Conversely, they highlight successful rebrands where careful preservation of URLs and content led to improved rankings, illustrating best practices in action.

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9. Conclusion

Ross and Scott wrap up the episode by reiterating the critical nature of careful planning in SEO strategies, especially during significant changes like rebranding. They encourage listeners to engage with their community through their Facebook group and to stay tuned for upcoming episodes.

Ross signs off with, “Learn from our mistakes. Yes. Sorry to cut you in, but go ahead.” (24:54)

Scott adds, “Thank you for listening, everybody.” (33:20)

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Final Thoughts: Episode 488 of SEO 101 offers a rich blend of current SEO news, practical advice, and real-world experiences. From understanding the dominance of specific WordPress plugins to navigating the complexities of Google's algorithm updates and executing a successful website rebrand, Ross and Scott provide listeners with invaluable knowledge to enhance their SEO endeavors.

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For more insights and to join the conversation, visit the SEO101podcast Facebook group.

Transcript

[Scott Vanack]

Foreign.

[Ross Dunn]

Hello and welcome to SEO 101 on WMR FM episode number 488. This is Ross Dunn, CEO of Step Forth Web Marketing. And my co host is my company senior SEO Scott Vanack. Okay, let's jump into this. What's the first bit of news here? Oh, it's some non SEO news, but still kind of interesting. What is this?

[Scott Vanack]

Yeah, this is kind of fun. This was reported on that Search Engine Journal by Roger Monti and I'm not sure who got this data. I'm actually looking at the article from him right now and I can't actually see where he pulled it up from. But anyways, it is. They did a scan of 140,000 WordPress sites to try to reveal which plugins are the most used. And so I've got the top 10 list here, which is some of them are. Well, most of them actually aren't really that surprising. Yoast comes in at the top with almost 58% of people using it. Really does not surprise me. We use it for, I think every single WordPress client. I'm trying to think. We used to have one that didn't use Yoast for whatever reason, but almost, yeah, 58%. And then followed by redirection in second place, 26.85%. Those two are definitely out of this whole list. Those two plugins are ones we use with virtually every single client. A little caveat there. We have in the past, distant past, had issues with redirection, crashing and breaking sites when redirects are added. Our programmer hated it for a while because it was causing all kinds of problems. But I haven't seen any issues from it in a long time now. So I think those are in the past. The next few are WP Rocket. I don't think we tend to use that very much.

[Ross Dunn]

We use it all the time. Yeah, we do. We use it for speeding up our sites.

[Scott Vanack]

Oh, see that. See that falls in the category after.

[Ross Dunn]

You'Ve done your work. So that's probably why.

[Scott Vanack]

Fair enough. Rank math comes in at 18%. Imagify 11.62% all in one SEO, which is like one of Yoast's biggest competitors. 5%. So a tenth of Yoast and I actually had a story a few months back. Oh maybe about six months ago or so, maybe longer. A client decided they were going to dive in and try to do more SEO than we were doing and they installed all in one SEO even though we already had Yoast in. And when they installed and activated all in one SEO all the stuff from Yoast got just obliterated off of the website. And then their rankings crashed. And because they didn't really use it, they just installed it and activated it and didn't do anything. And then the rankings crashed. Then I panicked, like, what is happening? And I go on the site and all the titles are, like, just the basic default titles. And I've luckily found it within a few days of the client doing it. And I fixed it and told them, like. Or asked them, like, did you do this? What's going on here? Did you get hacked? And they did, and they apologized, and then they sent me a bottle of whiskey to say they were sorry. So if you're a client and you want to screw up, that's cool, but the new price is a bottle of whiskey to apologize.

[Ross Dunn]

Well, the other one, Rank Math is definitely by far their most biggest competitor.

[Scott Vanack]

Oh, I skipped right over that. I'm sorry. Rank Math. You know, I actually have no direct experience with Rank Math because we're so Yoast heavy. Yeah, Rank Math, seopress is on the list. Broken link checker, XML sitemap generator. I found kind of interesting because all. Well, most of the SEO tools do that for you already, so I don't know, maybe these are people that aren't using Yoast or some of the others. Hard to say. And then schema.org structured data is just under 2% adoption, which doesn't surprise me because there are a lot of ways to add markup. A lot of people do it manually. Yoast does some for you. There are other tools like wordlift that do it. There's just. There are a lot of different ways to do it, and I guess there really isn't a single dominating plugin for structured markup at the moment. There's a lot of players.

[Ross Dunn]

Well, the source of this data was Kinsta, a hosting company. So who knows? Just, you know, obviously they've got a lot of websites there. I don't know if that's a lot for a hosting company. I mean, sounds like a crazy amount. But then for big hosts like WP Engine, who knows? They probably have millions and millions and millions of WordPress sites, so be interesting to see what data they have. All right, jumping into SEO news. The November core update is still rolling out. I always got to start with the core updates because there's always something happening. And you got a little bit of info here.

[Scott Vanack]

Yeah, we don't have a lot. We first talked about the November core Update in episode 486. So two episodes ago, and it's still rolling out. There's lots of chat at SC Roundtable and all over the place. People seeing a ton of volatility rankings are going crazy. But we're almost a month in and it's still going, so who knows? Not a lot to say, but just if you are finding yourself affected as usual, hold tight until it's over because whatever you've lost could easily come back before they're done. So just those core updates right before Christmas, you gotta love it.

[Ross Dunn]

Yeah, it feels like the time is coming where we just won't even have core updates. It's just. It'll just constantly change and it's advancing so quickly now.

[Scott Vanack]

We're kind of there. Like Google does do updates all the time, but core updates are of course bigger, but they kind of go unnoticed a lot of the time now because things are always changing anyways. Is it a core update? Is it just part of their regular fluctuation? A little tweak here and there? I mean, it's hard to tell sometimes.

[Ross Dunn]

Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's funny though that I can only imagine how much they dislike having to share any of this information because all the questions they cause and issues they cause and they just probably just want to shut it all down and just say, hey, you know what, this is what we're doing. Tough. And you know, there's a chance. They obviously don't want this, but if they became less of a leader and you know, there were other search engines out there that were close to their market share, it wouldn't be so intense. But again, they wouldn't be making the money they are. So anyway, hopefully we'll see that day because I'd love to. I'd love to see Google take a hit.

[Scott Vanack]

That's when SearchGPT really takes off next year. I have a feeling they might take a bit of a piece of that pie.

[Ross Dunn]

We can hope. All right, Google Search Console recommendations are fully live. Now, these are essentially a feature that provide optimization opportunities and suggested actions for your organic search improvement. These are provided by Google, so take everything with a grain of salt. But generally this is technical stuff, so it's probably a win win when you're making these changes. They noticed or they announced this on November 26 that it was fully rolled out. So that's good to know. And recommendations are updated on a regular basis and may change or expire over time.

[Scott Vanack]

I love that regular basis. Like is it daily, weekly, annually, who knows? It's a mystery.

[Ross Dunn]

Whatever it is, they consider it regular.

[Scott Vanack]

Yes, lots of fiber in those recommendations.

[Ross Dunn]

Exactly, exactly. Now you said you went through a bunch of clients. What did you see?

[Scott Vanack]

Yeah, so I checked on a bunch of clients trying to see what recommendations we're finding. And I would say they're not really recommendations, at least what I'm saying, rather observations. Because I only saw two. Only two? One like I saw multiples of these two. One was it said a query recently got fewer impressions than usual. And another one had said a page recently got more clicks than usual. It was very basic and I, you've got to know that they've got more technical recommendations that are out there. Maybe it's not a hundred percent rolled out because those are the only two types I could find. Or maybe that's just a good sign that our clients are in such good shape that Google doesn't have anything to add. I'm just going to go with that. I think I'm just going to pretend that's it. Which maybe, I don't know, they're just.

[Ross Dunn]

Going to say things could improve. It depends.

[Scott Vanack]

It depends. We'll let you know on a regular basis if it's any better.

[Ross Dunn]

It depends. Oh boy. Okay. And what's next here?

[Scott Vanack]

Yeah, so we've been finding that Google, according to Search Engine Journal, Google is testing bare bones hotel search queries being removed in three European countries. So. Or, sorry, they're switching to bare bones hotel search queries. So let me explain that because I totally messed that up. Google, it's really affecting Germany, Belgium and Estonia. Estonia as part of this temporary test where they are removing all hotel specific type searches. And you're only seeing basic, you know, 10 blue links type searches. It's only impacting searches for specific hotels. So if you're looking for something like say hotels in Paris, it's going to be what you're used to seeing. But it sounds like it's more specifically if you're looking for branded type searches. And this test is in response to the EU's Digital Markets act with ongoing pressure from comparison sites. Gary Ells had stated that it is only a test, no action is required and they expect it to go back to normal. So if you are a hotel in the eu, specifically Germany, Belgium or Estonia, you might start to see some stuff you don't like, but just know it's coming back. You're going to get those regular results back soon. And I don't know if they said there was no clear date when this test is slated to end, but I would imagine it won't be too far.

[Ross Dunn]

In the Future, just in case there was some confusion there, it's not impacting a search for a specific hotel. Okay. So when you do a search for a specific hotel, it shows up. But if you don't do that, if you're just generally searching for a hotel, that's when you see this system kick into play. And I guess I don't know whether or not they're just trying to show people what they're going to end up with if they get blocked. See what your future will be like if we follow your. Your requests. Yeah, because there's some validity to that. I'm sure a lot of people have gotten used to what they see in search engine results and they may not like just the classic 10 blue links coming back. It sounds like overkill. I mean, I. But I think, again, I don't know all the detail of this New Digital Markets Act, I'm sure being that it's the eu, that it's extremely complex and all encompassing, so that's okay. I love seeing Google get a bit of a hit in that. In these situations, I think I fall.

[Scott Vanack]

In sort of the same bucket as Barry. A couple months ago he had said something to the effect of he hates reporting on legal stuff. And I think I'm kind of the same. So it's. I don't know, I find it tricky. It gets confusing when you start talking about that sort of stuff.

[Ross Dunn]

I think in another life I was a lawyer. I don't know, I like those little. Yeah, just differentiators and the, the intricacies of language and stuff are going to be interesting, but way too much work.

[Scott Vanack]

That's fair.

[Ross Dunn]

At this point I'm like, all right, I know some people who are switching careers at this stage in life. You know, I'm not quite 50, but. And I see the allure. I definitely see the allure. But then at this point, we're at a place where we've got such a good name and we get a lot of business and it's great. We. I don't know, it's hard to say no to just sticking with it, right?

[Scott Vanack]

Yeah, totally.

[Ross Dunn]

But I, I know this is off track, but anyone out there who's making the switch, holy cow, I've nothing but admiration for you because that is a big deal. Especially if you're coming out of a situation where you are in a comfortable place. That's just amazing to me. I can't believe it, honestly. All right, so let's take a quick break. When we come back, we're going to talk about the 148 terms that drive 15% of Google's searches. SEO101 will be back right after recess. Welcome back to SEO101 on WMR FM, hosted by myself, Ross Dunn, CEO of Step 4th Web Marketing, and my company, senior SEO Scott Vanack. Alrighty. What are the 15% of Google searches that are driven by only one hundred and forty eight terms? Okay, so what are they? They see roughly 250 billion searches per month according to AI overviews.

[Scott Vanack]

That's Google total.

[Ross Dunn]

That's Google's. Okay. Now, according to this study at Spark Toro, the top 148 terms make up about 37.5 billion of those searches per month. That's crazy. The top searches are. Scott.

[Scott Vanack]

All right. Oh, I hit scroll number one. YouTube. Do you want me to just go through them? Let's just go through them.

[Ross Dunn]

Sure, why not?

[Scott Vanack]

We got in order. YouTube, Gmail, Amazon, Facebook chat, GPT. That's interesting because that wouldn't have been up there a year ago. Google Translate, WhatsApp, Web, Google Maps. Number nine is Pornhub, and number 10 is Google Docs. You know, I was saying to Ross, I find it still kind of funny that some of these would be up here, like YouTube. I guess people still Google YouTube. They don't just go to YouTube.com or. Yeah, you know, it. Some of like Amazon and Facebook. I would have assumed that those would not be really things that people are searching for as heavily as they are, because you would just go there. People would just know by now. But I guess not.

[Ross Dunn]

It comes down to it. If there's one thing you can rely on, humanity. It's laziness. And that adding dot com is tough.

[Scott Vanack]

You know, that's a lot of. If you're on your phone, that's four extra things you can just hit. Go.

[Ross Dunn]

Totally.

[Scott Vanack]

It is faster, I guess.

[Ross Dunn]

It's not an easy swipe.

[Scott Vanack]

It's not. And sometimes you gotta click the little button to go to a different screen on your keypad. So that's even more work.

[Ross Dunn]

The only time that I would think it's just overly lazy is if you're using voice. Come on. You can add the dot com. Please. Really? I don't know.

[Scott Vanack]

Maybe you had a late night, you're drinking a lot, Your voice is sore. There's an excuse for everything.

[Ross Dunn]

Of course, none of us are surprised that there's an adult site in there. It drives innovation, as a sense. Vhs.

[Scott Vanack]

Lots of great comments. Not suitable for this program.

[Ross Dunn]

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, we just did that before the Show. All right, so other notable trends are 44% of Google searches are for branded terms and 56% are unbranded. The intent of these searches are informational or which is 51%. Navigational, which is 33% commercial, 14.5% and transactional, 0.69%. So transactional would be, you know, by bed, very simple. Right. Commercial would be, I. I guess branded. I always get this one wrong in examples was that I would say like.

[Scott Vanack]

Branded type stuff would be kind of. I always get it wrong too. I have to look it up all the time. It's ridiculous, but I do.

[Ross Dunn]

Yeah. Because I keep thinking it in different ways, but yeah, I guess branded makes sense. Anyway, navigational would be how to get to a certain place, I assume. I always think navigational, always think about websites, the navigation. But that's not what we're talking here. And then informational is. I want to know about, you know, when is the next full moon, you know, that kind of stuff.

[Scott Vanack]

Okay, so I just pulled up Semrush, which has some answers to that. Just to clarify, just make sure we got that right. Commercial and commercial intent is users searching for specific brands or products. Good, so got that right. Navigational. Are users searching for or using a keyword to directly search for a specific page on a website? Actually informational. I think you got that right. It's just searching the keyword for information on and. Or looking. Wait a minute, the user is searching the keyword for information and. Or an answer to a question. Right? Yeah. And then transactional by bet.

[Ross Dunn]

That's funny. Navigational. I wouldn't doubt listeners are on the same place I am. I mean, originally I did think it was something about the navigation of the website, but I just figured that's because I'm not se. Geo nerd and. And I should clarify. We've. We've learned this a few times over now, but we're old, we're losing things. Anyways, navigational. It just makes sense that we maps. But these days, because so many people are doing that kind of thing, I'm surprised there isn't actually one there for that. Anyway, top Topics. Arts and entertainment 17.46% computers and tech 13.42%. E commerce and shopping 7% games 6.79% and I'm sure if we went on we'd find something else we've just talked about.

[Scott Vanack]

Yeah, the list for topics actually goes. It's quite long. I think they've got about 30 topics listed. So those are just the top four. I felt like if we listed all 30, some listeners might click back and go to some other podcasts.

[Ross Dunn]

So skip 30 seconds. Yeah, yeah.

[Scott Vanack]

Then they miss the good stuff.

[Ross Dunn]

We all do it. All right, here's a Mueller file. Google, just because you call yourself it, it doesn't mean you will rank for it. Now, I know you wanted to share this because this is something that you ran into recently. So Villazan.

[Scott Vanack]

Yeah. So somebody had asked John Mueller via Blue sky, which new social media platform I've created my account and I highly recommend it.

[Ross Dunn]

That's a way to drop Twitter, which I'm all for.

[Scott Vanack]

Oh yeah, I dropped. I dropped Twitter slash X a while ago when Elon started doing Elon things. I'm like, delete account gone. I'm out of there. But that's a whole politic thing I don't want to get into. But yeah, anyways, Blue sky, check it out if you are so inclined. The owner had asked. I don't have the specific question. I just have the gist of the question. They had rebranded from betterhalf AI to theweddingcompany.com There you go, buddy. Free plug. And wants to know why they're not ranking for the wedding company. So and this, they did this just like I think he said four months ago. So this. There are a lot of reasons why they're not ranking for the wedding company. But anyways, John's response was this is a competitive space and the name is quite generic. He added, just because you call your company something doesn't mean it'll show up on a. It'll show up on top in search like that. And isn't that the truth? Especially the wedding company. That's like every wedding company out there would rank for that in theory. So some notes from my, from my side here is really, you know, this kind of goes back to the old Exact match domain update. It used to be so easy, you know, before that update. Geez, I want to say a few years ago, but it must be at least a decade now. I don't even know. That update was a long time ago. You could have created a website called the weddingcompany.com and you would have ranked for it probably instantly. Those days are over. It takes a lot of time after rebranding, especially because they went from one website to another. So all of their citations, all of their inbound links, all of that stuff, or most of it probably is, is discussing their old brand better half. So clearly, you know, there's a big discrepancy there. Unless they've gone through and changed all of their internal linking or sorry, external inbound links, which I doubt that's the case. It's almost impossible to do that. And so, yeah, that stuff just takes time. So if you are thinking, hey, I created this domain name and I want to rank for it. You've got to do all the same work as everybody else if you want to rank. It's not that simple anymore.

[Ross Dunn]

Yeah, the used car sales or the used car lot dot com. I mean, why aren't they being found for used cars? What the hell? Just it. I don't know. Anyway, it's a funny thing you posted in that sense, but. But it's almost like he's reading the site owner was reading something from 1997 or 2000 back when that was more likely. That said, that happens all the time.

[Scott Vanack]

Well, it's interesting too. Like I'm actually going to talk about this stuff in a second here. It's like the perfect segue. But like, did they do a change of address, tool submission and search? Like there's so many things, we don't know if they did or did not and they just changed the domain and want to rank for it. I don't know, it's kind of funny. I don't know. I think it's funny.

[Ross Dunn]

Yep, exactly. Yeah. And like you said, a good segue. You put some notes here and I'll sure have some stuff to add. But these are your tips for rebranding to a new domain.

[Scott Vanack]

Yeah. So we've had a couple clients come to us in recent times where they've switched domain names and in one case they didn't just switch domains, they switched everything, like absolutely everything. And that was a really small consulting gig. And I'm not actually sure where they're at right now. I should follow up because I'm curious. But yeah, so I've got a few tips on if you plan on doing that. First of all, if you want to switch domains, my first recommendation is don't. But obviously there are situations where you have to many different situations where that might happen. So I've just got a few things on here on what you need to look for. And I hope I'm not missing too much. I'm sure I'm missing some stuff. But the first thing you want to do before you transition, and I'm assuming the new website's built basically or it's getting there, crawl your current site with something like Screaming Frog and make sure you've got a full export of all that information because you May need to reference your old site at some point during this process or even a year or two down the road. Who knows? If you crawl it with Screaming Frog, it's going to save so much data, like all your basic stuff, like titles and descriptions and just everything. It's going to save everything. You're going to want that and it will come very handy when you have to do redirects later. You can use a tool like Semrush to export your full ranking details. So go into Semrush and export everything your site is currently ranking for and then that'll help give you an idea of what pages are doing really well, because you want to save those pages. If you've got pages on your site that are doing awesome, try to make sure you get that content on the new site on the same URL. Obviously it's going to be a different domain, which is a bit of a problem, and you're going to want to redirect it, but don't lose content. I have had clients do big branding pushes or even just redesigns on the same site. I had one in particular and they had one page in particular that was getting thousands and thousands of views. And when they did the rebrand or, sorry, the relaunch, they lost that page. They thought it wasn't important and their traffic plummeted. They have since put the page back and their traffic actually came back, which is great, but that stuff can get overlooked. So if you have pages that are performing really well, expect to lose that traffic. If you don't keep the page.

[Ross Dunn]

I can't remember. I wish I could remember which client it was. Not that I share, but just for more context. Anyway, there was a client who I said, I talked to about the history of their site. When I was. I think they just signed and, and I said, well, you know, we were talking about your website. You made some changes to it. Can you give me a little bit of an update on what it was? And blah, blah, blah. She told me, well, they, they, you know, they essentially cleaned up the site and stuff. Well, later on we. I was looking like, like, I see a lot of pages here that were ranking before. Where are they? You know, where did you not redirect them? We need to find out where to redirect them. It says, oh, no, those are gone. What? Well, they had just simply cleaned out. Spring cleaning. You don't do spring cleaning on content.

[Scott Vanack]

No.

[Ross Dunn]

I mean, unless it's getting like one traffic. One. You know, if it's just completely pointless, sure. If it's irrelevant or if it's cannibalizing other content. Yes, that's the fine. But those things you consolidate or you, you know, there's far smarter things to do. And they genuinely lost a ton of authority and traffic from that and cut us off at the knees was what we could do with their site. I believe they're a success story now. I can't recall. Not all of them are as much as we try, but it's astonishing what is often done. So please do listen to us when we're sharing this information. It's very important that you are very careful with the content you have. We've done it ourselves, I have to admit. 100. We cut out a news site of our own that was from the early 2000s where we were rampant with content. We had so much content we were talking about earlier. We were one of the leaders in content in the industry and we were really proud of it. But it had gotten so out of date and it was using different. I think we were using Dreamweaver to create the site sense. So it wasn't even compatible WordPress. It was just. We didn't have time. We were too busy to do the merge and we since have loaded it all back in. But the damage was done and so it happens. Of course we did this way many, many, many, many years ago. We're much wiser now. So listen to our wisdom, learn from our mistakes. Yes. Sorry to cut you in, but go ahead.

[Scott Vanack]

No, no, you should cut me off if you need to. That's good. Oh, and then the last thing before you start, super obvious. Make a backup of your site, please. Full, full backup. Make a backup. We've seen new sites launch where they have to roll back to the old site for various reasons. Sometimes things are broken on the new site. Sometimes rankings plummet so bad they need to go back. That's pretty rare. But it happens. So.

[Ross Dunn]

And test it. Test the backup I've had.

[Scott Vanack]

Yeah.

[Ross Dunn]

Probably 50% of the backups I've made, I haven't been able to restore. That's scary. That's a huge amount and it frightens me. If you want to be really safe, load it into a. Like a stage site or something as the back of previous site or something.

[Scott Vanack]

Anyway, it's a bit of a tangent, but do that with all your computer backups as well. Because I moved away. I used to work in our office and I moved away, started working from home and within a few months my work computer crashed. I lost everything. I had a backup. Great. The backup failed. I Lost everything. Luck. And that was before everything was on the cloud. And that was. I can't even say how big of a nightmare that was. It was humongously bad. So, again, learn from our mistakes. Make sure your backups work. Yeah, it's. Who thinks to do that? Nobody. Right? Okay. When you're doing your new website. So this is some general stuff here. We kind of already talked about a bit of this. Keep your content the same when you can. I said that already. Don't change your content unless you have to. I mean, obviously you're gonna have to make some changes, especially if you're doing a branding play and all kinds of stuff. There are reasons we have to change it. But if you can keep content the same, keep it the same, Keep your URL slugs the same. If you can keep your title tags, your meta descriptions, image alt attributes, structured markup, definitely get that moved into the new site. A lot of content management systems now will do some of this for you, but really, you don't want to change more than you have to change. If there's things you can keep the same, keep them the same. A caveat there. I'm also assuming that your site is ranking and performing really well. If your site is garbage and it's performing terribly, you can probably do whatever you want. But if you're. If you're making a lot of money, getting a lot of traffic, you really have to be careful about this stuff. We had another client, and this one has a huge success story. They were paranoid. Their site was, I don't even know, maybe from the 90s still. It was so bad. But they were ranking number one. They were doing awesome. We did a full redesign for them. The new site was beautiful. And we went crazy, like, trying to Keep all the URLs the same and just keeping things the same. Only the design changed. And it worked. It was awesome. And then the client was like, nope, I'm not going to launch it. I'm scared. I don't lose my rankings. And I think it was. I think it was maybe two years later he finally came to us and said, okay, I'm ready to launch. Let's just do it. He was terrified. I think we all kind of were a little bit, because if it failed, his business goes under. And in that case, his rankings actually got better. They improved. And at least initially, he hasn't been with us for a while, so I don't know where he's at today, but for the first year or so, things just got better. So you don't have to be scared when you do this stuff. But you have to be very careful for sure. Make sure any linking inside your website because you are changing your domain name. Any internal links in the content you're keeping is now pointing to a domain that doesn't exist anymore. And then redirecting. So change all your internal linking. Our programmer Dennis will often do that sort of thing with database find and replace type stuff. So that's a good way to do it if you're set up to do that and you know how to do it. You just really have to be careful about that. Fix all your links, update your online social profiles. Google my business, Yelp your social accounts like Facebook. Anywhere you've got links to your site and you control them, update those links. Then you want to make sure when the new site launches, you have 301 redirects for everything that is changing. If your domain is changing, that's everything. So make sure all the old pages are 301 redirected to the new ones. And then that's where you can finally go in and talk to Google. Use their change of address tool. Say, hey, this new site is my new site. Take the old one and switch everything over. To do that, you do have to have both the old and new profiles verified. You have to have the 301 redirects from the old to the new in place. If you don't, it won't let you do it. But once that's set up, you can do that and Google will be happy. And that's sort of the gist of it. I hope I didn't miss too much. But one other thing to note, please transfer your Google Analytics tracking codes. We've definitely had clients that don't do that. I think we even goofed on that once upon a time. But, you know, it happens.

[Ross Dunn]

In 27 years, we've made mistakes.

[Scott Vanack]

Yeah, we had two. We made two.

[Ross Dunn]

But the key is to learn from them.

[Scott Vanack]

Exactly. Yeah. Get your. Nobody wants to go in and check your analytics a few months down the road and be like, okay, how's this launch going? And, oh, we have zero traffic. Oh, we didn't track any of it. Great, you don't want that. And then also, and we've seen this happen a few times. It's a nightmare. Make sure that any blocking on the new site is removed when the new site goes live. That's the biggest nightmare I've had clients do that where they. Well, and actually in one case, a client, they did a CMS upgrade. And when the CMS upgraded the developers. For some reason it auto blocked the whole website with robots Txt and then it was about, I don't know, I wouldn't say a month, but I don't think it went that long. A couple weeks ranking started to crash and then we realized the entire site was blocked and they didn't do any changes to the site. That's just a backend update and oh, it's just so catastrophic. So you got to be careful there.

[Ross Dunn]

And the other thing too is we're dealing with a site right now where we're trying to transition it to us from another provider for a new client. And in his case, it seems like the Google Analytics and Google Search Console are not his. They're under their account. Don't let that happen. Please, please, please. I mean, I realize this is technical to some, I mean, heck, I know some people don't want to deal with any of this, but it's really important you take that, make that a little extra effort. When you're starting a new website, or perhaps you've never had one, that you own those platforms, they're created on your account and you are giving the other companies access to your system because this stuff is important. It's really, really, really important. Data Search Console is not such a big deal because it's easy to just get that access again. I think a lot of that data it is, yeah, but analytics is massive. At least With Google Analytics 4 year you're only a little behind.

[Scott Vanack]

You're only losing.

[Ross Dunn]

Forced us to start with a clear slate. The whole world did anyway. But just the same, just be really, really, really, really careful.

[Scott Vanack]

Yeah, it was hard. I actually had a meeting with that client today and we were talking about, I was talking about how I needed access to this stuff and he said, well, can I share my screen and you can walk me through giving you access? I get no problem. So we do that and he logs into analytics and it's like, set up your new account. Like he has no access to anything. And what's hard for me is I want to help him get through this, but he's at the mercy of his developer. Or maybe it was a previous SEO or dev designer. I don't really know who set up the analytics account. I know it exists because the code is on his website and I can see it, but we have no idea who set it up or where the access is. So he's right now hopefully trying to track that down and get in there. But you don't want to be in that spot. You should have access from the very start.

[Ross Dunn]

Exactly. And please do take our advice when we say in any SEO company you have that says please get on this immediately. In this case, this was left a little long and it's in a tough. We're in a tougher position to get this information. I try to stress things like this very, very carefully and succinctly. But I don't get me wrong, I realize everyone's crazy busy, but this is important. You want your website, you want to have all this stuff transition at the right time. Yeah. It's just there's so many things that can go wrong if it's not that little extra effort isn't put in. Well, on behalf of myself, Ross Dunn, CEO of Stepforth Web Marketing, and my company, Senior SEO Scott Vanack, thank you for joining us today. If you have any questions you'd like to share with us, please feel free to post them on our Facebook group, easily found by searching SEO101podcast on Facebook. Have a great week and remember to tune into future episodes, which air every week on WMR fm.

[Scott Vanack]

Awesome. Thank you for listening, everybody.

[Ross Dunn]

SA.

[C]

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