Ask HN: We go global. We should rename our startup. Best practices? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: We go global. We should rename our startup. Best practices?

8 pointszeynalov8 comments

We started a local startup in Caucasus but we get too many emails from other countries if we could do our service in their country. It became so successful that we think we should go global.

But the problem is the name sucks. Because we didn't think big, we named it with local language and we think it's not a good idea going global with this name. Here are some pros and cons of renaming:

PROS

- It will be more memorable

- It will be a global name that everyone can spell

- (maybe) New name will bring a new breath to the team

CONS

- We will lose brand recognition of local costumers.

- We must buy another domain, so we will lose our Search Engine Optimized domain. We spent last year 23k $ for SEO

So what should we do for minimal consumer lost and maximal recognition? Do you have any experiences about renaming startups? What are best practices?

Or should we use the old name?

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Specifically regarding:

  We must buy another domain, so we will lose our Search Engine Optimized domain. We spent last year 23k $ for SEO

You will not lose Search Engine Rankings providing that you 301 your links to the new url - if you want them to go to specific pages you can also do that fairly easy with some .htaccess 301'ing instead of doing it through your registrar.

Search Engines will then eventually replace your existing links with your new ones.

NOTE: Sometimes, there may be a minimial loss in some rankings during this period however, if you continue with your SEO strategy then will go to their original positions and may improve (this is also dependant on other facts such as domain age, geo-targetting etc)

Furthermore, you should try and get your links changed which are currently linking to your site to your new url by contacting the webmasters who will change them for you.

If you are going to change the name, make it googlable. It isn't just to avoid strange symbols (C# I'm looking at you), but the name you choose, if typed in a search engine, shouldn't return other more prominent results. So, don't call your company HomerSimpson, for example.

you mean I should built a recognizable brand and it must rank for its name in google :)

Stick with the current brand for your own country and use the new brand for expanding abroad.

Our main idea was using a single domain for best SEO opportunities. Because we already optimized and spent too much money on our old domain, using the same domain will boost our new-other language section on the same site. I think using different domain names will a problem to us.

Will geo-targetted domains be used on the same domain or on sub-domains? As search engines regard sub-domains as completely different sites.

That's a nice problem to have! Can I ask what the name is (phonetic)?

it's abbreviations of some azerbaijani words. nonsense

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