September 26, 2023 • 25 mins
In this episode, we will be answering a listener question about how to maintain SEO when changing the name of a business and creating a whole new website.
I am joined by my go-to SEO source, Meg Casebolt.
You can connect with Meg at https://loveatfirstsearch.com/
To read the blog post on this topic referenced in this episode
Submit your questions for a future episode by joining us at http://www.joinfruition.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Brooke Monaghan (00:00):
immediately go to the story that I am just.
This person just can't get ridof me.
They're like leave me alone, Idon't want anything to do with
your shit.
Meg Casebolt (00:14):
When you and I had a really good time like
recording that podcast, it wasall pity.
Brooke Monaghan (00:19):
Yes, exactly, you did it to be nice to me and
since then you've realized whata loser and a just total piece
of garbage I am.
Welcome to another episode ofMake your Business Work For You.
(00:40):
I've got two new episodes foryou today and in this one we're
going to be answering a listenerquestion.
This is a question aboutmanaging or maintaining SEO when
going through a rebrand orbuilding a new website, and for
this I pulled in Meg Casebolt.
Meg uses she and her pronouns.
I pulled Meg in because she isthe person who I would go to if
(01:01):
I had a question about SEO.
Part of the promise of thistype of Q&A episode is that I'm
going to pull in people who Iknow are qualified to answer
your questions.
So we'll be joined by Meg.
I'm going to share Meg'sinformation in the show notes,
as well as a couple of resourcesthat she shared, but before we
get into the episode, just acouple of reminders.
The first thing is that you cansubmit your questions to the
(01:24):
show and I will pull in anexpert contributor to discuss a
response to your question bygoing to joinfruition.
com.
In the month of October, so ifyou're listening to this live,
that is right around the corneror here in the month of October
2023, you will be able to, forfree, access the support tier in
(01:47):
the Fruition community space,where you can get a guaranteed
answer to your questions from anexpert contributor, and you
also get the full interview invideo format as soon as it's
recorded.
So, in other words, you don'thave to wait for.
You don't have to wait for itto come out on the podcast.
So the clip that you heard inthe beginning of this episode,
(02:08):
before we went into our introhere, was from that kind of
extended interview, because I'mfriends with most of the people
who I end up on these calls withand we're just chit chatting
and I include all of that in theextended video format.
If we are beyond the month ofOctober, then not to worry, you
can come to joinfruition.
com and join us in the supporttier that would allow you to get
(02:30):
those videos, and everyone canask questions.
So head over there and ask yourquestions.
Finally, if you would like tosupport the show, please make
sure that, if you have notalready, you leave a rating and
review on Apple podcasts and youshare this episode with
somebody who you know needs tohear it.
It makes a big difference and Iso appreciate you.
(02:52):
All right, let's get into it.
When I started my business, Icreated a website that, over the
past seven years, has gainedsome good SEO.
I want to rebrand my business,including a name change, which
would mean that I need to redomy website, but I'm nervous
(03:13):
about losing any established SEOcred.
My questions are (03:16):
one, is this a valid concern?
And two, who do I turn to forsupport to make sure that I'm
doing this correctly?
In other words, I get a littleconfused.
Who do I hire for the stuff?
An SEO expert?
A website designer?
A website developer?
What's even the differencebetween all of those incredible
people?
So let's start with number one.
Meg Casebolt (03:36):
Okay, so I'm grateful because you sent me
this so I could prepare and Iknow the order in which the
question was answered.
So you want to rebrand yourbusiness, which is fantastic.
If you already have someauthority on your website,
that's really great, right?
Especially if the rebrand is arebrand, not a pivot.
(03:59):
If you're like this is the nameof my business before I got
married and now I'm married andI changed my last name, I think
you and I talked about namechanges, like if it's just a
name change and you're not alsoadjusting your services, this
can be a pretty straightforwardprocess, but we will see a drop
(04:20):
in your SEO because Googleattributes your authority to
your domain.
So if you're at brookem.
com versus brookemonaghan.
com, like, google doesn't knowthat that's the same .com, that
you're the same person.
So what Google thinks about iswhat's the authority attached to
(04:41):
that domain?
I, before I rebranded my SEOagency to Love at First Search,
I had it under a personal sortof superhero brand called
Megabolt Digital and basically Itook all the same information
that was on my page and justwent like here's the Megabolt
(05:03):
Digital page.
And then I took the domain andwent now we're calling it Love
At First Search.
And when you set it up that way, when you migrate, when you
switch the domain, but you don'tmove anything, you don't change
anything, it's just the domainthen there is a little bit of a
dip in your SEO, as Google'slike oh, it used to be called
(05:23):
this, but now it's called thisand the new name doesn't have
that history.
But if you hire the right personto make that change for you,
it's really more of like achange of address form than it
is a move, right?
Like going to the post officeand saying I was at the corner
of Main and State and now I wantmy address to be one Main
(05:45):
instead of one State, but you'renot changing that much.
So the post office can stillsend you mail.
But often when people dorebrands they change a lot of
shit too right when you're likeI used to have this thing, but
as long as I'm going throughthis rebrand process, it's not
just gonna be, I'm gonna changemy brand colors, it's also gonna
(06:08):
be I'm gonna make a pivot.
When that happens, we have tobe careful about not just
changing the domain, because ifyou're just changing the domain
and you're saying all the mailthat went to this address now
goes to this address, you maylose a couple envelopes and
stuff, but it's not like likeGoogle still will understand if
(06:28):
you're pointing all the sametraffic to the same place, okay,
you'll pick up some of thosebacklinks, you'll pick up some
of that authority.
But once we start to change thecopy on the page, once we start
to change the services on thepage, once we start to go well,
that blog post isn't relevantanymore, so I'm just gonna take
it down.
This is where you need to do,probably some sort of audit of
(06:50):
what's working on your existingsite so that as you make those
changes, you can either maintainor improve the traffic that's
already coming to your website.
So I'm trying to come up withan example off the top of my
head.
I didn't prepare this much, butlet's say that you have a blog
(07:11):
that's like it's kicking ass.
It's bringing in a ton oftraffic for you and then you're
like, well, that's not reallyrelevant to what I do anymore,
so I'm just gonna delete itwhile I'm going through this
rebrand.
Then, as you're, or, I'm gonnarename it and I'm gonna move it.
If you don't set up a redirect,if you don't give Google like
(07:31):
this is where you used to havethis information and now it's
here, here then Google thinksthat it's gone forever.
So if you're just rebrandingand all you're doing is changing
your domain, that actuallyisn't that complicated.
You can go into your domainserver.
You can change your nameservers.
(07:52):
It's like maybe a 10 minuteprocess for a web developer, for
somebody who knows what they'redoing and I'll talk in a minute
about designers, developers,SEOs right, if you're redoing
everything, then the first stepis I want you to do an audit of
(08:14):
what's working so that way youdon't lose any of what you've
already spent all this timecreating this credibility.
Right, take some of thatinformation about what's working
.
You know you can go into yourGoogle Analytics, your Google
Search Console.
You can hire somebody to helpyou with this, but take a look
at what's working.
What are your existing keywords?
What are the pages that arebringing in traffic?
And map out (08:34):
on my old website, here's what was working, and I
want to make sure that thatinformation transfers over to my
new website.
And if there's a phrase thatdoes really well for me on my
old website, I want to make surethat that phrase appears in the
copy of my new website.
(08:55):
I want to almost like map outwhat was working and then make
sure that each of the thingsthat's working on the old
website carries over into thenew one.
Brooke Monaghan (09:05):
So you're saying make sure that.
So if you have a blog postthat's performing really well,
like, make sure that that blogpost is still living under the
or at least the keywords thatyou're using for that blog post,
or like something related tothat blog post with, like, the
words that are working reallywell, is living on the new
(09:26):
website.
Meg Casebolt (09:28):
New website.
And it's clear that it's gone.
So if you're just going like,okay, I'm moving from WordPress
to WordPress and I'm taking thisyou know this existing website,
and just changing the URL ofthe domain, but everything else
is fine, then you might be atlike a site level, be able to be
like well, it used to be ADCand now it's XYZ.
com, right, that shouldn't betoo problematic.
[Brooke Monaghan] But if you'relike, you're building a whole
(09:48):
new site [Meg Casebolt] Ifyou're building a whole new
website and then you flip theswitch and it goes from you know
dead to alive.
You're like Frankenstein,bringing this thing to life
Right.
When you do that, you need tobe careful, because if you're
like I'm just going to copypaste all the stuff from my old
website to my new websitewithout taking down the old
(10:11):
website, then it's going to looklike you're plagiarizing
yourself.
Or if you move over half of itbut you're like I'll move over
the second half later, then ifyou don't you know export,
import correctly, then you couldpotentially like lose all the
traffic for the things thathaven't been imported.
Or if you're like I was onWordPress but now I want to be
on Squarespace and all ofSquarespace blogs have like
(10:34):
domain.
com, slash, blog, slash this,and they import and all of the
permalinks have changed, then itlooks like it's all brand new
content.
So I'm giving you the worstcase scenarios here because I do
want to strike a little bit offear of God into you when you're
doing this and say hire aprofessional [Brooke Monaghan]
yes, okay, I'm scared.
(10:54):
[Meg Casebolt] Hire aprofessional.
Because the timing of this isreally important.
When you turn the power off onone house and turn the power on
on the other house, we want tomake sure that the furniture has
moved.
Brooke Monaghan (11:12):
Right.
Now I happen to know I'm goingto keep this person anonymous,
but I do know who submitted thisquestion and I do know that in
this person's case this is notgoing to be a pivot.
This is going to be literally aname change and a domain change
and like they might change somethings on the website, but the
website is going to stay.
But I like that we are goinginto the other options because I
(11:34):
am in the middle of a pivot, soI'm just like selfishly sitting
here like, and then also [MegCasebolt] Give me all the
information.
[Brooke Monaghan] Yeah, I'm likeI don't even have good SEO.
So I don't know what I'm scaredof, but keep going, keep going.
I'm glad you're here.
We're going to be okay.
Meg Casebolt (11:52):
Let's talk about those three professionals that
you could hire here.
Okay, so this personspecifically said I don't know
who to hire.
Should I hire an SEO person, aweb designer, a website
developer?
I want to talk about thedifferences between those.
I'm an SEO person.
I care about what's thestructure of your pages, what's
the?
You know, what are yourpermalinks looking like, so that
(12:15):
Google can send them to theright places?
How are things linked betweenthem?
What are all your keywords?
I care about that side ofthings and like how quickly does
your page load, so that wayGoogle doesn't send to a page
that takes eight minutes to loadon mobile, right?
I care about how the experienceis for people coming to your
(12:36):
website from search engines andI care about how easy it is to
navigate, so that way Google'slittle crawler robots can can
find what they're looking for.
Before I was an SEO person, Iwas a website designer.
As a website designer, I waslike all right, I'm in WordPress
and I need to make sure thatthis background color is the
(13:00):
same as the brand colors andthese words show up in this
place and this image looksreally clear.
But I wasn't necessarilythinking about things like page
speed load time and menustructure and like that kind of
thing.
I was like I want to make thisbeautiful and I want to make it
something that people want toread.
There's the difference.
(13:22):
Some web designers know someSEO.
Some SEO people can make thingsthat are beautiful.
There's not always an overlaphere in the Venn diagram.
Web developers aren't looking athow pretty things are.
They are making sure that theywork very functionally.
Sometimes people are developersand designers.
(13:44):
Designers make things that lookbeautiful.
Developers make things that arestructurally strong.
It's like almost like anarchitect versus an interior
designer.
Architects can build you, you Iused to work at an architecture
firm, so I tend to go back andforth on this stuff.
Architects can build you ablueprint.
That is like almost like astructural engineer versus an
architect, where it's like Iwant to make sure that this
building stands up.
(14:05):
I want to make sure that whenpeople move through there are no
doors into rooms that don'texist.
Developers make things runsmoothly.
Designers make them beautifuland the SEO people make sure
that there's a mailbox outsidethat has a phone number in front
of it so you can find it.
So for your question submitter.
(14:29):
They might just need adeveloper to go into the domain
hosting service and flip aswitch from a custom name server
to a different custom nameserver and bloop, within four
hours it's all done.
That developer probably costsyou I don't know $100 to $200 an
(14:51):
hour and it can be done and youdon't have to think about it
again and it's done correctly.
If you're doing some of thatother stuff where you're like, I
want to make sure that as Imove from this place to this
place, you can hire someone likeme an SEO person who will do
that auditing and be like allright, let's also make sure that
this moves here and this moveshere, and let's map out the
things and let's do the customerexperience and all that.
(15:11):
But then I'm not going to be theone who goes in and I'm like oh
, let me re-code your websiteRight.
Set up the HT access in thetext.
You know, robos.
txt files.
That's a developer that's mystructure around me or die.
So you might need all three ofthose people if you're doing a
(15:33):
complete brand overhaul.
You might need the SEO personto make sure that the traffic
continues to move to yourwebsite.
You might need the designer tomake sure that it looks great,
that it looks like somethingthat people want, that it's
functional, that the userexperience is good, and you
might need the developer to makeit work really well.
Brooke Monaghan (15:53):
Great.
Okay, so I'm gonna recap whatyou said and make sure that I
understand it, because then wecan make sure that our listeners
understand.
Okay, so for the person who issubmitting this question, who
I'm pretty sure is just gonna bechanging their name and thus
changing their domain, thatmight be as simple as you go
(16:14):
into where you ever like you'rehosting [Meg Casebolt] Go daddy
or whatever.
[Brooke Monaghan] yeah, I useHover, I think.
Or you might have done itthrough Squarespace or something
like that, I don't know.
You're just changing, you'regetting a new domain and you are
just literally changing thedomain that links to the
existing website.
There might be a dip, becauseGoogle has to catch up with the
(16:35):
fact that this is now changing.
It doesn't know thatcredibility that you built up
around that old domain, Googlehas to catch up with the fact
that all of that stuff is on anew domain.
It's like you're having torebuild that a little bit, but
it's already set up in a waythat you know works.
You can expect it to catch backup.
(16:56):
That right?
Okay.
Meg Casebolt (16:58):
Y ou definitely also want to say that old domain
, everyone that sends traffic tothat old domain, we want to
send it to the new domain.
Brooke Monaghan (17:09):
[Meg Casebolt] So you might have to set up a
redirect.
Meg Casebolt (17:11):
You might have to call it a parked domain.
I can't remember all thedifferent terminology because
I'm not a web developer.
Brooke Monaghan (17:17):
Got it.
Okay.
So if you need help with that,that's going to be a web
developer, but you don't reallyneed to worry that much.
There's going to be a dip, butit's going to pan out and you
know what you have to do.
So you might just have to bitethat bullet.
But if you are pivoting or ifyou are rebuilding a totally new
website, then what you want todo to not have all of your SEO
(17:42):
cred vanish is audit what isactually working and what about
your website is actually workingwell with the SEO?
What people are finding you,through what pages maybe they're
landing on like what's workingreally well, and you want to
make sure that you areincorporating that into the new
website and an SEO person isgoing to be the person who's
(18:02):
going to help you do that andhelp you map all of that out so
that you can then bring it toyour web developer, who helps
you with the new website notdesigning the new website, but
creating the structure of thenew website to make sure that
all of that is included and inthe right places.
I don't even know what theterminology is for that, because
that's not what I do and that'snot what Meg does, but they're
(18:23):
going to bring it to life.
So Meg is going to like SEOarchitect, design the whole
thing, and then you're going tobring it to your engineer
developer who's going to be likehere's how we actually make
that happen.
Meg Casebolt (18:36):
Mm-hmm.
Okay, yeah, and as you're doingthat redesign, you're like I
want to change the colors, Iwant to make the page look
different, I want to make surethat the call to action buttons
get to this place.
That's when you might hire adesigner.
So the SEO person in ourmetaphor, it might be the
architect, who's thinking aboutwhere things go.
(18:58):
The developer is the structuralengineer who makes sure that
everything actually works andthat the plumbing's in the right
places.
I mean, the architect, they'regoing to worry about that too.
It actually wouldn't be thestructural engineer, that would
be the mechanical, electricalplumbing engineer.
[Brooke Monaghan] But the pointis [Meg Casebolt] The point.
And then you bring in somebodywho's like this is the wall
color that I want, this is how Iwant this, this is where I want
(19:20):
the bed to go right.
It's three different things,but they all work together to
make sure that you have abeautiful home.
Brooke Monaghan (19:26):
Great, and it might be that there's some
overlap, but at least now youknow the questions to ask to
find the right person, becauseif somebody says, yeah, I'm a
designer, but I'm also, like, adeveloper, you can run this by
them and say, ok, well, here's asituation with the SEO and
here's what I've gotten fromthis audit that I've done, and I
really want to make sure thatall of this carries over.
Do you know how to do all ofthat in the back end to make
(19:47):
sure that, whatever.
You know what questions to ask,to make sure that they are at
the level that you need them tobe at to maintain your cred.
Meg Casebolt (19:57):
And if you're not sure, ask around, because all of
us who are doing this knowpeople who do it.
Agencies are more likely to beable to have everyone in-house,
but I will share a blog postwith you so that you can put in
here that I wrote that was likehere are these different
scenarios with lists to likehere are my preferred developers
(20:17):
.
So if you need a developer,don't call me.
But if you need someone to dothe SEO audit, before you go to
a developer, let's have aconversation.
And even if you have adeveloper and you're like I just
want somebody who is onlyfocused on this, you can hire
somebody for like an hour tojust review your stuff right and
be kind of in your back pocket.
(20:38):
So, it doesn't have to be allthe people.
Brooke Monaghan (20:41):
Yeah and y'all.
I'm just going to say thisbecause sometimes I say like, oh
, yeah, no, you're going to wantthis person to do that.
And I see the people get scaredbecause they're like I had to
pay all of these people andwhatever.
It's not that expensive.
People will pay like 10 grandto join a mastermind and are
like scared to hire a lawyer.
And I'm like, get yourpriorities in check.
(21:04):
You know like you got to.
It's really not that expensive.
Meg Casebolt (21:08):
Yeah, you're going to hire me for like a half an
hour to talk you through thisfor your own website for like
150, 200 bucks.
Like it doesn't always have tobe.
You have to hire somebody to doit.
Sometimes you want somebody tocome up and be like here's the
plan for you, and people willusually do that.
You know.
Brooke Monaghan (21:23):
And maybe you do have to pay a couple grand
for one of these things, butlike if the reason that you're
in a bunch of programs that costmore than that is because
you're trying to motivateyourself to do the work, and
then you could just take thatmoney and pay someone else to do
the work and do it right andget it done.
I'm just saying it might beeasier.
Like I am a coach so I, listen,I think that all of that stuff
(21:47):
is great, but I'm just sayinglike sometimes you need to just
go and find the person who'sright for the job and just fork
over 500 bucks and just get itdone right and move on with your
life.
Meg Casebolt (21:56):
You don't need to know how all this works.
You need to have somebody whocan do it for you sometimes.
[Brooke Monaghan] And focus onyour own work.
Brooke Monaghan (22:02):
Or maybe you heard everything that Meg just
said and you were like, oh gotit.
Yeah, I know how to do all that.
Great, perfect.
Go for it.
Meg, This was so much fun.
Meg Casebolt (22:12):
Sorry, sorry for getting really deep, but it's a
deep question, right, likethere's a lot of different
nuance.
Brooke Monaghan (22:16):
Oh no, I took it there.
I always take us there.
That's the whole point of thispodcast.
Meg Casebolt (22:21):
So we don't need to gloss over any of this, we
can just go dig right in.
Brooke Monaghan (22:24):
Yes, that's what I want to do, because I
know that people ask questionsand then they hear like the most
" of the three steps and you'relike, but what about the 75
steps of step one that youdidn't talk about?
Meg Casebolt (22:34):
And like what are the variations and how is this
different if this is the case?
Brooke Monaghan (22:40):
Right, right, right.
Okay so I'm going to link thatblog post.
If you want to go and find Meg,I'm going to put all the
information in the show notes,including the link right to that
blog post.
I can tell everybody listeningthe reason that I hunted Meg
down to answer this question andrisked being annoying because I
was convinced that I was beingannoying which you're not alone
(23:02):
is because I personally haveeverything that I don't know
that much about SEO, but what Ido know I learned from Meg's
free resources.
They're awesome, and if you'rereading those and you're like
this does not do it for me I amnot the kind of person who wants
to do this then just hire herand then she can do it for you.
Meg Casebolt (23:23):
But that's pretty much how we work now.
It's free resources and donewith you support.
I want people to understandsort of how this works, but not
have to figure out how the wholething is made.
Brooke Monaghan (23:35):
Yeah, this was so much fun.
Thank you so much for being sogenerous with your time and
knowledge and wisdom, and Icannot wait to see you again.
Meg Casebolt (23:44):
And now that I know that you're doing this,
just shoot me a message or avoxer when you have another
question and we'll just hop onand record it Now that I know to
look for it now it'll be easy.
I can't wait.
I'm excited.
All right.
immediately go to the story that I am just.
This person just can't get ridof me.
They're like leave me alone, Idon't want anything to do with
your shit.
Meg Casebolt (00:14):
When you and I had a really good time like
recording that podcast, it wasall pity.
Brooke Monaghan (00:19):
Yes, exactly, you did it to be nice to me and
since then you've realized whata loser and a just total piece
of garbage I am.
Welcome to another episode ofMake your Business Work For You.
(00:40):
I've got two new episodes foryou today and in this one we're
going to be answering a listenerquestion.
This is a question aboutmanaging or maintaining SEO when
going through a rebrand orbuilding a new website, and for
this I pulled in Meg Casebolt.
Meg uses she and her pronouns.
I pulled Meg in because she isthe person who I would go to if
(01:01):
I had a question about SEO.
Part of the promise of thistype of Q&A episode is that I'm
going to pull in people who Iknow are qualified to answer
your questions.
So we'll be joined by Meg.
I'm going to share Meg'sinformation in the show notes,
as well as a couple of resourcesthat she shared, but before we
get into the episode, just acouple of reminders.
The first thing is that you cansubmit your questions to the
(01:24):
show and I will pull in anexpert contributor to discuss a
response to your question bygoing to joinfruition.
com.
In the month of October, so ifyou're listening to this live,
that is right around the corneror here in the month of October
2023, you will be able to, forfree, access the support tier in
(01:47):
the Fruition community space,where you can get a guaranteed
answer to your questions from anexpert contributor, and you
also get the full interview invideo format as soon as it's
recorded.
So, in other words, you don'thave to wait for.
You don't have to wait for itto come out on the podcast.
So the clip that you heard inthe beginning of this episode,
(02:08):
before we went into our introhere, was from that kind of
extended interview, because I'mfriends with most of the people
who I end up on these calls withand we're just chit chatting
and I include all of that in theextended video format.
If we are beyond the month ofOctober, then not to worry, you
can come to joinfruition.
com and join us in the supporttier that would allow you to get
(02:30):
those videos, and everyone canask questions.
So head over there and ask yourquestions.
Finally, if you would like tosupport the show, please make
sure that, if you have notalready, you leave a rating and
review on Apple podcasts and youshare this episode with
somebody who you know needs tohear it.
It makes a big difference and Iso appreciate you.
(02:52):
All right, let's get into it.
When I started my business, Icreated a website that, over the
past seven years, has gainedsome good SEO.
I want to rebrand my business,including a name change, which
would mean that I need to redomy website, but I'm nervous
(03:13):
about losing any established SEOcred.
My questions are (03:16):
one, is this a valid concern?
And two, who do I turn to forsupport to make sure that I'm
doing this correctly?
In other words, I get a littleconfused.
Who do I hire for the stuff?
An SEO expert?
A website designer?
A website developer?
What's even the differencebetween all of those incredible
people?
So let's start with number one.
Meg Casebolt (03:36):
Okay, so I'm grateful because you sent me
this so I could prepare and Iknow the order in which the
question was answered.
So you want to rebrand yourbusiness, which is fantastic.
If you already have someauthority on your website,
that's really great, right?
Especially if the rebrand is arebrand, not a pivot.
(03:59):
If you're like this is the nameof my business before I got
married and now I'm married andI changed my last name, I think
you and I talked about namechanges, like if it's just a
name change and you're not alsoadjusting your services, this
can be a pretty straightforwardprocess, but we will see a drop
(04:20):
in your SEO because Googleattributes your authority to
your domain.
So if you're at brookem.
com versus brookemonaghan.
com, like, google doesn't knowthat that's the same .com, that
you're the same person.
So what Google thinks about iswhat's the authority attached to
(04:41):
that domain?
I, before I rebranded my SEOagency to Love at First Search,
I had it under a personal sortof superhero brand called
Megabolt Digital and basically Itook all the same information
that was on my page and justwent like here's the Megabolt
(05:03):
Digital page.
And then I took the domain andwent now we're calling it Love
At First Search.
And when you set it up that way, when you migrate, when you
switch the domain, but you don'tmove anything, you don't change
anything, it's just the domainthen there is a little bit of a
dip in your SEO, as Google'slike oh, it used to be called
(05:23):
this, but now it's called thisand the new name doesn't have
that history.
But if you hire the right personto make that change for you,
it's really more of like achange of address form than it
is a move, right?
Like going to the post officeand saying I was at the corner
of Main and State and now I wantmy address to be one Main
(05:45):
instead of one State, but you'renot changing that much.
So the post office can stillsend you mail.
But often when people dorebrands they change a lot of
shit too right when you're likeI used to have this thing, but
as long as I'm going throughthis rebrand process, it's not
just gonna be, I'm gonna changemy brand colors, it's also gonna
(06:08):
be I'm gonna make a pivot.
When that happens, we have tobe careful about not just
changing the domain, because ifyou're just changing the domain
and you're saying all the mailthat went to this address now
goes to this address, you maylose a couple envelopes and
stuff, but it's not like likeGoogle still will understand if
(06:28):
you're pointing all the sametraffic to the same place, okay,
you'll pick up some of thosebacklinks, you'll pick up some
of that authority.
But once we start to change thecopy on the page, once we start
to change the services on thepage, once we start to go well,
that blog post isn't relevantanymore, so I'm just gonna take
it down.
This is where you need to do,probably some sort of audit of
(06:50):
what's working on your existingsite so that as you make those
changes, you can either maintainor improve the traffic that's
already coming to your website.
So I'm trying to come up withan example off the top of my
head.
I didn't prepare this much, butlet's say that you have a blog
(07:11):
that's like it's kicking ass.
It's bringing in a ton oftraffic for you and then you're
like, well, that's not reallyrelevant to what I do anymore,
so I'm just gonna delete itwhile I'm going through this
rebrand.
Then, as you're, or, I'm gonnarename it and I'm gonna move it.
If you don't set up a redirect,if you don't give Google like
(07:31):
this is where you used to havethis information and now it's
here, here then Google thinksthat it's gone forever.
So if you're just rebrandingand all you're doing is changing
your domain, that actuallyisn't that complicated.
You can go into your domainserver.
You can change your nameservers.
(07:52):
It's like maybe a 10 minuteprocess for a web developer, for
somebody who knows what they'redoing and I'll talk in a minute
about designers, developers,SEOs right, if you're redoing
everything, then the first stepis I want you to do an audit of
(08:14):
what's working so that way youdon't lose any of what you've
already spent all this timecreating this credibility.
Right, take some of thatinformation about what's working
.
You know you can go into yourGoogle Analytics, your Google
Search Console.
You can hire somebody to helpyou with this, but take a look
at what's working.
What are your existing keywords?
What are the pages that arebringing in traffic?
And map out (08:34):
on my old website, here's what was working, and I
want to make sure that thatinformation transfers over to my
new website.
And if there's a phrase thatdoes really well for me on my
old website, I want to make surethat that phrase appears in the
copy of my new website.
(08:55):
I want to almost like map outwhat was working and then make
sure that each of the thingsthat's working on the old
website carries over into thenew one.
Brooke Monaghan (09:05):
So you're saying make sure that.
So if you have a blog postthat's performing really well,
like, make sure that that blogpost is still living under the
or at least the keywords thatyou're using for that blog post,
or like something related tothat blog post with, like, the
words that are working reallywell, is living on the new
(09:26):
website.
Meg Casebolt (09:28):
New website.
And it's clear that it's gone.
So if you're just going like,okay, I'm moving from WordPress
to WordPress and I'm taking thisyou know this existing website,
and just changing the URL ofthe domain, but everything else
is fine, then you might be atlike a site level, be able to be
like well, it used to be ADCand now it's XYZ.
com, right, that shouldn't betoo problematic.
[Brooke Monaghan] But if you'relike, you're building a whole
(09:48):
new site [Meg Casebolt] Ifyou're building a whole new
website and then you flip theswitch and it goes from you know
dead to alive.
You're like Frankenstein,bringing this thing to life
Right.
When you do that, you need tobe careful, because if you're
like I'm just going to copypaste all the stuff from my old
website to my new websitewithout taking down the old
(10:11):
website, then it's going to looklike you're plagiarizing
yourself.
Or if you move over half of itbut you're like I'll move over
the second half later, then ifyou don't you know export,
import correctly, then you couldpotentially like lose all the
traffic for the things thathaven't been imported.
Or if you're like I was onWordPress but now I want to be
on Squarespace and all ofSquarespace blogs have like
(10:34):
domain.
com, slash, blog, slash this,and they import and all of the
permalinks have changed, then itlooks like it's all brand new
content.
So I'm giving you the worstcase scenarios here because I do
want to strike a little bit offear of God into you when you're
doing this and say hire aprofessional [Brooke Monaghan]
yes, okay, I'm scared.
(10:54):
[Meg Casebolt] Hire aprofessional.
Because the timing of this isreally important.
When you turn the power off onone house and turn the power on
on the other house, we want tomake sure that the furniture has
moved.
Brooke Monaghan (11:12):
Right.
Now I happen to know I'm goingto keep this person anonymous,
but I do know who submitted thisquestion and I do know that in
this person's case this is notgoing to be a pivot.
This is going to be literally aname change and a domain change
and like they might change somethings on the website, but the
website is going to stay.
But I like that we are goinginto the other options because I
(11:34):
am in the middle of a pivot, soI'm just like selfishly sitting
here like, and then also [MegCasebolt] Give me all the
information.
[Brooke Monaghan] Yeah, I'm likeI don't even have good SEO.
So I don't know what I'm scaredof, but keep going, keep going.
I'm glad you're here.
We're going to be okay.
Meg Casebolt (11:52):
Let's talk about those three professionals that
you could hire here.
Okay, so this personspecifically said I don't know
who to hire.
Should I hire an SEO person, aweb designer, a website
developer?
I want to talk about thedifferences between those.
I'm an SEO person.
I care about what's thestructure of your pages, what's
the?
You know, what are yourpermalinks looking like, so that
(12:15):
Google can send them to theright places?
How are things linked betweenthem?
What are all your keywords?
I care about that side ofthings and like how quickly does
your page load, so that wayGoogle doesn't send to a page
that takes eight minutes to loadon mobile, right?
I care about how the experienceis for people coming to your
(12:36):
website from search engines andI care about how easy it is to
navigate, so that way Google'slittle crawler robots can can
find what they're looking for.
Before I was an SEO person, Iwas a website designer.
As a website designer, I waslike all right, I'm in WordPress
and I need to make sure thatthis background color is the
(13:00):
same as the brand colors andthese words show up in this
place and this image looksreally clear.
But I wasn't necessarilythinking about things like page
speed load time and menustructure and like that kind of
thing.
I was like I want to make thisbeautiful and I want to make it
something that people want toread.
There's the difference.
(13:22):
Some web designers know someSEO.
Some SEO people can make thingsthat are beautiful.
There's not always an overlaphere in the Venn diagram.
Web developers aren't looking athow pretty things are.
They are making sure that theywork very functionally.
Sometimes people are developersand designers.
(13:44):
Designers make things that lookbeautiful.
Developers make things that arestructurally strong.
It's like almost like anarchitect versus an interior
designer.
Architects can build you, you Iused to work at an architecture
firm, so I tend to go back andforth on this stuff.
Architects can build you ablueprint.
That is like almost like astructural engineer versus an
architect, where it's like Iwant to make sure that this
building stands up.
(14:05):
I want to make sure that whenpeople move through there are no
doors into rooms that don'texist.
Developers make things runsmoothly.
Designers make them beautifuland the SEO people make sure
that there's a mailbox outsidethat has a phone number in front
of it so you can find it.
So for your question submitter.
(14:29):
They might just need adeveloper to go into the domain
hosting service and flip aswitch from a custom name server
to a different custom nameserver and bloop, within four
hours it's all done.
That developer probably costsyou I don't know $100 to $200 an
(14:51):
hour and it can be done and youdon't have to think about it
again and it's done correctly.
If you're doing some of thatother stuff where you're like, I
want to make sure that as Imove from this place to this
place, you can hire someone likeme an SEO person who will do
that auditing and be like allright, let's also make sure that
this moves here and this moveshere, and let's map out the
things and let's do the customerexperience and all that.
(15:11):
But then I'm not going to be theone who goes in and I'm like oh
, let me re-code your websiteRight.
Set up the HT access in thetext.
You know, robos.
txt files.
That's a developer that's mystructure around me or die.
So you might need all three ofthose people if you're doing a
(15:33):
complete brand overhaul.
You might need the SEO personto make sure that the traffic
continues to move to yourwebsite.
You might need the designer tomake sure that it looks great,
that it looks like somethingthat people want, that it's
functional, that the userexperience is good, and you
might need the developer to makeit work really well.
Brooke Monaghan (15:53):
Great.
Okay, so I'm gonna recap whatyou said and make sure that I
understand it, because then wecan make sure that our listeners
understand.
Okay, so for the person who issubmitting this question, who
I'm pretty sure is just gonna bechanging their name and thus
changing their domain, thatmight be as simple as you go
(16:14):
into where you ever like you'rehosting [Meg Casebolt] Go daddy
or whatever.
[Brooke Monaghan] yeah, I useHover, I think.
Or you might have done itthrough Squarespace or something
like that, I don't know.
You're just changing, you'regetting a new domain and you are
just literally changing thedomain that links to the
existing website.
There might be a dip, becauseGoogle has to catch up with the
(16:35):
fact that this is now changing.
It doesn't know thatcredibility that you built up
around that old domain, Googlehas to catch up with the fact
that all of that stuff is on anew domain.
It's like you're having torebuild that a little bit, but
it's already set up in a waythat you know works.
You can expect it to catch backup.
(16:56):
That right?
Okay.
Meg Casebolt (16:58):
Y ou definitely also want to say that old domain
, everyone that sends traffic tothat old domain, we want to
send it to the new domain.
Brooke Monaghan (17:09):
[Meg Casebolt] So you might have to set up a
redirect.
Meg Casebolt (17:11):
You might have to call it a parked domain.
I can't remember all thedifferent terminology because
I'm not a web developer.
Brooke Monaghan (17:17):
Got it.
Okay.
So if you need help with that,that's going to be a web
developer, but you don't reallyneed to worry that much.
There's going to be a dip, butit's going to pan out and you
know what you have to do.
So you might just have to bitethat bullet.
But if you are pivoting or ifyou are rebuilding a totally new
website, then what you want todo to not have all of your SEO
(17:42):
cred vanish is audit what isactually working and what about
your website is actually workingwell with the SEO?
What people are finding you,through what pages maybe they're
landing on like what's workingreally well, and you want to
make sure that you areincorporating that into the new
website and an SEO person isgoing to be the person who's
(18:02):
going to help you do that andhelp you map all of that out so
that you can then bring it toyour web developer, who helps
you with the new website notdesigning the new website, but
creating the structure of thenew website to make sure that
all of that is included and inthe right places.
I don't even know what theterminology is for that, because
that's not what I do and that'snot what Meg does, but they're
(18:23):
going to bring it to life.
So Meg is going to like SEOarchitect, design the whole
thing, and then you're going tobring it to your engineer
developer who's going to be likehere's how we actually make
that happen.
Meg Casebolt (18:36):
Mm-hmm.
Okay, yeah, and as you're doingthat redesign, you're like I
want to change the colors, Iwant to make the page look
different, I want to make surethat the call to action buttons
get to this place.
That's when you might hire adesigner.
So the SEO person in ourmetaphor, it might be the
architect, who's thinking aboutwhere things go.
(18:58):
The developer is the structuralengineer who makes sure that
everything actually works andthat the plumbing's in the right
places.
I mean, the architect, they'regoing to worry about that too.
It actually wouldn't be thestructural engineer, that would
be the mechanical, electricalplumbing engineer.
[Brooke Monaghan] But the pointis [Meg Casebolt] The point.
And then you bring in somebodywho's like this is the wall
color that I want, this is how Iwant this, this is where I want
(19:20):
the bed to go right.
It's three different things,but they all work together to
make sure that you have abeautiful home.
Brooke Monaghan (19:26):
Great, and it might be that there's some
overlap, but at least now youknow the questions to ask to
find the right person, becauseif somebody says, yeah, I'm a
designer, but I'm also, like, adeveloper, you can run this by
them and say, ok, well, here's asituation with the SEO and
here's what I've gotten fromthis audit that I've done, and I
really want to make sure thatall of this carries over.
Do you know how to do all ofthat in the back end to make
(19:47):
sure that, whatever.
You know what questions to ask,to make sure that they are at
the level that you need them tobe at to maintain your cred.
Meg Casebolt (19:57):
And if you're not sure, ask around, because all of
us who are doing this knowpeople who do it.
Agencies are more likely to beable to have everyone in-house,
but I will share a blog postwith you so that you can put in
here that I wrote that was likehere are these different
scenarios with lists to likehere are my preferred developers
(20:17):
.
So if you need a developer,don't call me.
But if you need someone to dothe SEO audit, before you go to
a developer, let's have aconversation.
And even if you have adeveloper and you're like I just
want somebody who is onlyfocused on this, you can hire
somebody for like an hour tojust review your stuff right and
be kind of in your back pocket.
(20:38):
So, it doesn't have to be allthe people.
Brooke Monaghan (20:41):
Yeah and y'all.
I'm just going to say thisbecause sometimes I say like, oh
, yeah, no, you're going to wantthis person to do that.
And I see the people get scaredbecause they're like I had to
pay all of these people andwhatever.
It's not that expensive.
People will pay like 10 grandto join a mastermind and are
like scared to hire a lawyer.
And I'm like, get yourpriorities in check.
(21:04):
You know like you got to.
It's really not that expensive.
Meg Casebolt (21:08):
Yeah, you're going to hire me for like a half an
hour to talk you through thisfor your own website for like
150, 200 bucks.
Like it doesn't always have tobe.
You have to hire somebody to doit.
Sometimes you want somebody tocome up and be like here's the
plan for you, and people willusually do that.
You know.
Brooke Monaghan (21:23):
And maybe you do have to pay a couple grand
for one of these things, butlike if the reason that you're
in a bunch of programs that costmore than that is because
you're trying to motivateyourself to do the work, and
then you could just take thatmoney and pay someone else to do
the work and do it right andget it done.
I'm just saying it might beeasier.
Like I am a coach so I, listen,I think that all of that stuff
(21:47):
is great, but I'm just sayinglike sometimes you need to just
go and find the person who'sright for the job and just fork
over 500 bucks and just get itdone right and move on with your
life.
Meg Casebolt (21:56):
You don't need to know how all this works.
You need to have somebody whocan do it for you sometimes.
[Brooke Monaghan] And focus onyour own work.
Brooke Monaghan (22:02):
Or maybe you heard everything that Meg just
said and you were like, oh gotit.
Yeah, I know how to do all that.
Great, perfect.
Go for it.
Meg, This was so much fun.
Meg Casebolt (22:12):
Sorry, sorry for getting really deep, but it's a
deep question, right, likethere's a lot of different
nuance.
Brooke Monaghan (22:16):
Oh no, I took it there.
I always take us there.
That's the whole point of thispodcast.
Meg Casebolt (22:21):
So we don't need to gloss over any of this, we
can just go dig right in.
Brooke Monaghan (22:24):
Yes, that's what I want to do, because I
know that people ask questionsand then they hear like the most
" of the three steps and you'relike, but what about the 75
steps of step one that youdidn't talk about?
Meg Casebolt (22:34):
And like what are the variations and how is this
different if this is the case?
Brooke Monaghan (22:40):
Right, right, right.
Okay so I'm going to link thatblog post.
If you want to go and find Meg,I'm going to put all the
information in the show notes,including the link right to that
blog post.
I can tell everybody listeningthe reason that I hunted Meg
down to answer this question andrisked being annoying because I
was convinced that I was beingannoying which you're not alone
(23:02):
is because I personally haveeverything that I don't know
that much about SEO, but what Ido know I learned from Meg's
free resources.
They're awesome, and if you'rereading those and you're like
this does not do it for me I amnot the kind of person who wants
to do this then just hire herand then she can do it for you.
Meg Casebolt (23:23):
But that's pretty much how we work now.
It's free resources and donewith you support.
I want people to understandsort of how this works, but not
have to figure out how the wholething is made.
Brooke Monaghan (23:35):
Yeah, this was so much fun.
Thank you so much for being sogenerous with your time and
knowledge and wisdom, and Icannot wait to see you again.
Meg Casebolt (23:44):
And now that I know that you're doing this,
just shoot me a message or avoxer when you have another
question and we'll just hop onand record it Now that I know to
look for it now it'll be easy.
I can't wait.
I'm excited.
All right.
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