Does Changing the Shopify Store Name Affect SEO
Sometimes change to a retail veneer is required. Note that a couple of changes may help or forestall
your Shopify SEO. On Shopify, you can change your store name if you need to. Your business name is joined to your general existing brand picture, so marked
quests will never again be applicable to your business without appropriate
blueprints. This quick guide will be able to highlight to you:
Why you may need to change
your name on Shopify
How to change your Shopify
name
If changing your Domain
name hurts your Shopify SEO
And a few other tips and
tricks for Shopify
Why you may want to change your name on Shopify
An SEO based decision
should not be the driving force to making a name change for your brand. Before
you go forward and change your name and kick-starting the deep process of
regaining and recovering traffic, you need to know why you want to make the
change.
Changing your name to try
to get an edge on target keywords may not end up in your favor if users start
using different phrases to find you and your competition.
The following examples
show some of the top reasons businesses have for changing their name with valid
reason:
Moving onward and upward
A business expansion
provides a valid reason for a name change. These include businesses that start
as one entity and add onto themselves. Small businesses often do this. They
start with what they can afford to start up, then add onto services and
products to sell.
An example could be a
health food store (Vitamin Shack for example) and then the store owner decides
to begin offering deli items made in-house and got the clearance to sell
groceries and produce. They could rename themselves to Health Shack, Vittles
and Vitamin Shack, or any other combination. This change reflects that there is
now more offered than just vitamins now.
Location changes
If a single shop ends up
having to relocate AND has the location as a part of the name, this could allow
for a great reason to switch up their name…especially if the original location
will no longer be standing. Let’s say the owner of Glasgow Fine Finds (an
antique shop) ends up having to move to Brighton. She may then want to rename
her site to Brighton Fine Finds to be able to reflect the relocation (along
with updating all local listings) to be able to show that she is a singular
location tied to a city.
Company mergers
A merger is a typical
example in bigger businesses when changing a name. These are pretty
straightforward in reasoning. Company A joins Company B and now makes Company
A+B. The new company needs to reflect both names.
A great example of a
merger is with Disney. Disney merged with Pixar, so now movies produced show
they are made by Disney Pixar. The names are combined to show the unison and
then an internal change is needed to be able to reflect this to users.
Pivoting
Pivoting occurs when a
business changes its approach and what it is selling or providing. A pivot is a
way to both save the company and attempt not to take a huge loss if the
original product line is failing.
A possible example would
be a company that uses farmed hides for leather products. If there is a steep
drop in sales, they may want to change to vegan sourced materials to try to
appeal to a different demographic to keep the company afloat. There would
probably be a name change attached to this to better reflect the new approach
and product line.
How to change your Shopify name
Changing your name on
Shopify is a fairly simple process. This can be done in the back end of your
admin dashboard on your Shopify site.
Log into your admin
dashboard on Shopify → Go to settings → Go to General → Go to Store details →
Change it and click save. From this admin panel, you can change the name of your
Shopify site. This only allows the name of the site to be changed though. If
you wish to change the overall domain name you will have to check if it is
available and then begin a different process for a site migration along with
ensuring your keywords get adjusted to match the new domain.
How changes affect your SEO
Changing your name or
domain will have an impact on your SEO overall.
When you change these,
your SEO is essentially wiped clean.
This means all of your
efforts will need to be restarted to be able to both maintain and improve your rankings…because
a drop in traffic is inevitable. A drop in traffic to your site can easily
occur for a 6 to 12 month period. This should be expected no matter what
methods and choices you make. A change that seems as simple as flipping the
name has massive impacts. Google has recognized your site and all information
as something attached to a specific domain name. Changing the name changes the
URLs, and that means changes in the search engines in an opposite direction.
Tips for making a name migration
Although a drop is
inevitable, there are a few tips and tricks that can help have a lessened
impact on your site’s performance. You want to ensure this process runs
smoothly and efficiently to help your Shopify site make a full and improved
recovery.
Time the change to the time of year
Because there will be an
inevitable drop in site traffic, you want to be sure a change of this magnitude
has the least impact on your shop as possible. You do not want to change the
name of your shop and domain during your busiest time of the season. Time this
process based on the cycles of your shop. If spring is slowest based on your
product, start the official process late winter, so the heaviest hits occur
when your site is the slowest.
If you time this during
your busy season, you will have both the predicted loss of sales plus miss out
on a buffer from the busy season. This means invest in gaining extra traffic
during your busy season to bulk up sales and invest in little extra ads or
boosting your SEO services during the transition to attempt to slow and lessen the overall drop in traffic to your site.
Prepare for the inevitable
No matter what you do and
how great your team is…there will be a drop and slow in traffic to your site.
This is simply because of the way Google and other search engines work.
Changing your Shopify name is not something to do last minute or without a plan.
When preparing for this,
make a plan well before the change occurs.
I.e. When to make the
change, what the name will be, bringing in an agency before the change occurs,
having a promotional plan in place before and after the name gets changed, get
your new domain name adjusted.
Get your new Domain ready
When you know you want to
change your name for your Shopify site and have the domain name bought and
secured make sure anything needed for the site is ready.
One quick plan that can
begin to help reap more benefits is registering the domain on Shopify once the
domain is bought. This allows the domain name to begin aging some, so it isn’t
so new. A simple HTML landing page that links back to your existing site can
suffice until it is time for the official name change and migration of your
site.
You want to begin gaining
those branded searches for your new name and be able to showcase the move. With
proper redirects and new landing pages, existing clients will be able to
prepare for the change and those currently searching for the original name will
know what to expect when the new name launches.
Bring on an agency that is anything but a lemon
Bringing a consultant…or
even better…an experienced team on board can help make your name migration
process much easier to perform and understand. An agency… ah-hem Pearl Lemon …
can be the key to ensuring success during a large change.
When choosing an agency to
involve, it is important to choose someone that offers more than just front end SEO services in Lahore. There is a lot more involvement
during a process like this. Your chosen help should also have experience and
proven knowledge in technical SEO as well.
This type of move has much
more technical SEO involvement. This type of project
requires proper redirects, not making immediate content changes, and more. An
agency like Pearl Lemon has proven experience and case studies that can be
provided to show that this process can be done and allow for continual success.
What if I want to change the theme AND the name
Like many other CMS
systems, you are able to choose a theme at the start of your site creation and
change it later. Changing the site theme does usually come with a warning on
the site itself that the adjustment can affect layouts of content and pages and
some forms though.
Due to this, changing your
theme can have an impact on SEO to a similar tune that changing the name does.
Just like with adjusting a name, you need to prepare and look at possible
unintended consequences to the site if the theme is changed.
There are some plug-ins
available on Shopify…and other CMS options…that can help buffer and ease the
SEO impact of a theme change. A theme change can also affect your headings
through your site. If you have headings that are hyperlinked and varied
throughout the pages of your website, there could be some legitimate concerns
with this because some theme changes will not preserve this. Looking for help
with your Shopify SEO? Let Pearl Lemon help you make an easier
transition. Book a call today with our team to discuss your SEO plan and if you
need to change your site name or domain for your Shopify site!
Comments
Post a Comment