Rebranding, merging or repositioning? Keep the search equity you've spent years building.
A rebrand, merger or domain change is the highest-risk moment in a firm’s digital life. Handled badly, years of accumulated rankings, citations and authority can vanish overnight. Handled well, you arrive under the new name with everything intact. We handle it well.
What's actually at risk
A rebrand, merger or domain change touches every signal search engines use to trust you:
- Organic rankings tied to your current domain and URL structure.
- Backlinks earned over years, still pointing at your old URLs.
- Google Business Profile continuity – reviews, categories and map presence built up under the old name.
- Brand-name citations across directories and industry listings that still reference the old entity.
- AI engines that have learned the old brand and will keep citing it long after you have moved on.
None of this transfers automatically. It has to be moved – deliberately, and in the right order. Planning the move yourself first? Start with our rebrand and merger checklist.
The same disciplines apply when you are retiring an acquired brand after a merger: the acquired sites’ best pages carry equity your new brand should inherit through direct 301s — not lose behind a timed holding page.
How we protect it
- Domain-change migration protocol – full redirect mapping from every old URL to its new home, with zero downtime and full SEO equity preserved.
- Entity and brand-signal updates – Google Business Profile, directories and structured data (schema) updated across the web, so the new name is recognised everywhere the old one was.
- Content and metadata transition – titles, descriptions, internal links and on-page copy moved to the new brand without losing the relevance signals that earned your rankings.
- Post-launch rank monitoring – we watch your rankings closely after launch and act on any movement before it becomes a problem.
We've done this before
- Home of Mortgages – migrated from ExpressionEngine to WordPress with the original design preserved and uninterrupted online operations throughout. Read the Home of Mortgages case study.
- Cenkos Securities – a leading institutional stockbroker, replatformed from ExpressionEngine to WordPress in line with a new SEO strategy to boost visibility and manageability. Read the Cenkos case study.
Website Migration & Rebrand FAQs
Will we lose our rankings if we change our domain name?
There is always risk in a domain change – which is exactly why it needs a protocol rather than a leap of faith. Your rankings are tied to your existing domain, URLs and the signals pointing at them, so we map a redirect from every old URL to its new home, update your entity and brand signals across Google Business Profile, directories and structured data, and monitor rankings closely after launch so any movement is caught and acted on early. Handled deliberately and in the right order, a migration can be completed with your search equity intact.
How long does a website migration take?
It depends on the size and complexity of the site – a small brochure site and a multi-thousand-page platform are very different projects. What stays constant is the approach: planning comes first, the redirect mapping and entity updates are prepared before anything moves, and zero downtime is the standard we work to. We would rather extend the planning phase than rush a launch that puts your rankings at risk.
Can you migrate us away from Drupal, Wix or a bespoke CMS?
Yes. We are platform-agnostic on the way in and typically migrate to WordPress. We have replatformed sites from ExpressionEngine – including Home of Mortgages and Cenkos Securities – and from Wix, preserving the original design where required and keeping the business online throughout. The same process applies whether you are leaving Drupal, Wix, a bespoke CMS or an ageing proprietary platform.
When should we involve you in a rebrand or merger?
Before you announce it. The most damaging migrations are the ones planned after the new brand is already public, when redirects, entity updates and content transitions have to be improvised under deadline. Involve us while the rebrand or merger is still being planned and we can design the search transition alongside the brand work – so the new name launches with the old name’s authority behind it.
Planning a rebrand or merger?
Talk to us before you announce it. The earlier the migration is planned, the safer your search equity.