Rebranded my AI optimization sister agency and it’s gaining a good monopoly on traditional search engines.
Scored the domain OptimizedArtificialIntelligence.com about two years ago. Started optimizing it about a year ago. Was getting good page 1’s, and starting to get leads when I realized it wasn’t brandable.
Right now I get a lot of leads from referrals by people sharing “Reach out to Damon at SEO National.” Realized it wasn’t as easy to identify “Damon Burton at Optimized Artificial Intelligence.” The domain and brand was too good, making it too broad.
Rebranded and redirected it to AI Optimizers. More unique. More referrable. Relevant, matching acronym of AIO for “AI optimization.”
After the redesign, had the team map all the urls for redirects. Not a full domain redirect, but a one-for-one URL match and redirect to tell Google exactly where the old content went. Turned everything on, and submitted a change of address in Google.
The old domain held surprisingly strong for longer than I expected. It kept ranking for a good 4-6 weeks. Then they both ranked, until Google finally recognized and adjusted everything, and skyrocketed the new domain even higher.
You don’t have to lose credibility during a rebrand. Done correctly, you can actually come out even better.
See the bottom of this post on how to properly map a domain change to protect SEO.
