Last Updated on May 3, 2020 by ellduclos
Have you ever wanted to rebrand your blog? Or maybe you just want to fix up and niche down your current blog and aren’t sure if it’s worth it? Well, today I’m going to share with you all about why I decided to rebrand and create a second website (the one you’re on now!) It has been quite the journey but at the end of the day, I am glad I finally did it!
Why did I rebrand?
If you follow me on social media or are a part of my Facebook group then you know that two weeks ago Pinterest blocked my EllDuclos website as well as my Pinterest with Ell website. Now, as you may know I am a huge Pinterest fan and I am constantly raving about how awesome Pinterest is when it comes to growing your blog traffic. You can only imagine how upset I was to find out that my website was blocked on Pinterest. I went into complete panic mode. My website traffic dropped immensely and when I reached out to Pinterest they didn’t get back to me as promptly as I had hoped.
This was when I started to think about how I could rebrand my blog and if I had to, create a new website to start fresh on Pinterest. Luckily, a week and a half later Pinterest got back to me telling me that it was a mistake on their part and they happily unblocked my website. At this time I already had gotten rid of my Pinterest with Ell website and created BossGirlBloggers. This allowed me to switch my focus on EllDuclos.
So let’s talk about EllDuclos
This is my first ever blog that I had the pleasure of turning into my full time career. I started this blog in April 2017 with hopes of being able to escape my reality of being a miserable full time waitress and college drop out. Within 6 months I made over $1,500 a month. This blog is my baby!!! I am so grateful for it, it gave me purpose. You can read that story here. BUT, when I had first started this blog it had EVERYTHING from motivation, to beauty and lifestyle, to blog tips.
Part of me always wanted to separate my topics into two separate blogs but I was always afraid to take the leap. I didn’t want my blog traffic to suffer and I wasn’t sure of how much work it would be. The fact that Pinterest blocked my website gave me the perfect excuse to go ahead and rebrand!
BossGirlBloggers was born again!
If you didn’t already know, I tried to launch my BossGirlBloggers website (this blog) months ago but, again didn’t want to go through the stress of transferring my posts. HOWEVER, I finally did it and I’m so proud of myself! There are still a few things I’m working on (like setting up my featured images and fixing my interlinking) but overall it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be!!
I was struggling with scoring brand collaborations on EllDuclos and I think one of the main reasons was because I had too many niches. Separating my blog tips from my lifestyle and beauty posts has really helped each blog have a more significant focus and topic!
BossGirlBloggers is dedicated to teaching other women how to pursue their passion for blogging full time and hearing stories from other entrepreneurs.
My EllDuclos blog is more focused on living a happy life, finding your confidence, self love, and beauty!
I absolutely LOVE having two websites for all the topics I write about.
Don’t worry, I’m going to go through EVERY STEP of how I made the switch, what helped, social media, and how I brought my brand visions to life.
Disclaimer: Affiliate links are used. I only recommend products and services I love and use! You can read my full disclosure here.
Pin it for later or to share the love!!
Rebrand Step One: Separating the niches
The first step when it came to rebranding was creating my new BossGirlBloggers website and transferring my “Blog Tips” blog posts from EllDuclos to BGB. To be honest this part FREAKED me out and I thought it would be a lot more difficult than it really was.
One thing to note is I use Siteground as my self host and if it wasn’t for them, I don’t think I would have pulled this off! They have an amazing 24/7 live chat that helped me through this transfer! If you are looking for a self host I highly recommend them!
And for reference, it can be difficult to find their live chat. You’ll want to go to “support” and scroll down to “Request assistance from our team”, then select “other technical issues”. Write up a quick message and hit continue. THEN scroll down to the small “contact us” link and from there you should be able to choose live chat!
Before I transferred any posts I had to set up my second site! I did have to purchase a new domain name and a new hosting plan with siteground. I think for the year I paid $70 something combined which isn’t bad! I can manage them all under the same login which is convenient!
Initially I didn’t think I would be able to transfer just a specific category (ex: blog tips) but it’s actually really easy to do!
FIRST: Go to your dashboard of the website you are wanting to transfer your posts from. Select Tools > Export
Second: Choose what you want to export. For me I wanted to export my “blog tip” posts so I selected Posts > then I chose the “blog tips” category! Once you have selected you would then hit DOWNLOAD EXPORT FILE.
Third: Now you want to go onto your new website and go to Tools > Import, it will give you some import options. Scroll down to the “WordPress Run Import” and select.
Fourth: You will now upload the downloaded .xml file that you saved previously! and TADA!
After I got my blog posts transferred the great part is since I still have my EllDuclos website, I didn’t need to re-upload any images! The only downside is I have to go through and upload new feature images!
Rebrand Step Two: Redirecting Old Links
The second step to rebranding is redirecting all of your old links! I have shared my links EVERYWHERE. Especially on Pinterest. It’s so important that I redirect my old links to my new links! This was really easy to do with a simple redirection plug in! I had to manually redirect my old links though and I had over 100 so it was tedious.
First: Install the “Redirection” plugin
Second: Click into “settings” and go to the “redirects” section
Third: Click “Add New” to create your new redirect. You’ll want to put in the old source URL and then the NEW Target URL. Everything else can stay the way it is.
Fourth: Click “check redirection” to make sure it’s working the way it’s supposed to! Then you are good to go!
NOTE: You need to make sure the Redirection plugin is up to date in order for it to work properly.
Rebranding Step Three: Figuring Out Brand Colors
Now that I have a second website I had to figure out if I wanted to change my brand colors. I have always been a fan of light pink (if you didn’t already notice) I find it very welcoming. I guess in a sense I didn’t rebrand my colors, however I did add yellow to my Pinterest!
Pinterest marketing is a huge part of what I do for a living so I tend to focus on branding my Pinterest a lot. Using warm, welcoming colors on Pinterest tends to help my Pinterest marketing strategies. I decided to add yellow to highlight key words in my pin graphics. This helped me increase my Pinterest pins clicks.
When choosing brand colors I always suggest choosing 3! You could do one light tone, a medium tone, and a dark tone color!
Here is an example of what my blog traffic looked like when my blog was blocked on Pinterest and what it looks like now that my website is unblocked and niched down.
as you can see, my blog traffic exploded back up again after I was unblocked. It went back to normal even though I rebranded and moved my “blog tips” posts over to my new blog. My personal development and lifestyle posts are still getting attention because of my Pinterest marketing and rebranded tweak in colors!
Here is an example of some of my new pin designs that are doing well:
Pinterest is KEY to my content marketing strategy, if you want to grow your blog traffic with Pinterest then you need this affordable e-course! It is a blog traffic game changer!
Those are the 3 major steps I took when I decided to rebrand but I wanted to add some additional tips too!
1. Rebrand with a new theme
Maybe you are feeling bored with your current theme? I love switching up my theme. It can make me feel re-inspired. I will say though, setting up themes can be a pain in the a**! It definitely takes me a few deep breaths, a glass of wine and a couple YouTube tutorials.
On BossGirlBloggers I use a genesis theme which I REALLY love but it definitely takes some learning to get it set up. You also have to purchase genesis separately from the theme so it can cost a bit more. Before purchasing a theme make sure you double check if you need to purchase Genesis in addition to the them!
Some of my favorite themes are:
2. Creating Social Media
When I re-branded I also had to make sure I had social media accounts for my new brand. I think it’s smartest to make sure you can have your new website claimed on social media before you create it! For example, I have my EllDuclos blog and I made sure to claim all my social media channels “@EllDuclos” I did the same for BossGirlBloggers! Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest!
Feel free to come connect with me on all my socials! (;
BossGirlBloggers socials: Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Pinterest
EllDuclos socials: Instagram | (same as BGB) Twitter | Facebook | Pinterest
3. Coming up with your Brand Message
When it comes to creating a brand or even rebranding, it’s important to have a brand message! What does your blog/business stand for? What is the message you are trying to get across? What is your ultimate purpose and how did you get to where you are? Ultimately, what makes your brand/blog/business stand out from all the rest?!
4. SEO loves a good niched down blog
Another reason I decided it was best to rebrand and separate my niches into two websites is because I was doing some SEO research. If you didn’t know, google SEO is not my strong suit and I’m still trying to learn it. However, it’s been said that if you have a blog that focuses on fewer niches it’s better for SEO.
Now I’m not saying you can’t be successful if you talk about multiple topics, I was still successfully working as a full time blogger when I had multiple topics on one blog… BUT my SEO was sh*t. I have yet to notice a huge difference separating my two blogs BUT hopefully in the long run it’ll be for the best.
5. Get re-inspired
I’m serious, rebranding ignited this passionate flame for blogging again! Raise your hand if you have been guilty of feeling burnt out as a blogger and not as motivated, because I freaking feel you!!! For awhile I started to feel this lack of wanting to do blogging.
Rebranding and creating a second website has relit my passion for blogging and I have felt more inspired than ever before!!
6. Photos
Lastly, I want to talk about photos. Having branded images to use can definitely help bring your brand to life! I know we aren’t all experts when it comes to taking photos. That’s why for my BossGirlBloggers website I use stock photos! In my opinion there’s nothing wrong with that.
I will say if you are doing a review of a product, talking about a place you’ve traveled to etc. then you should definitely try to use your own images!
But if you are wanting to brand your website with some awesome stock images, check out these sites!
If you’ve been wanting to rebrand or create a second website, let this be that push to make you take that leap of faith!!
I absolutely love BGB community you created on Facebook, you and all the girls there are amazing! I’m so glad I found your first blog when I started blogging, your advice was (and still is) really helpful.
It’s so inspiring how you took what happened with Pinterest as a motivation to create something new. It shows how passionate you are about your work 🙂
Thank you so much! This means a lot to me and I really appreciate your constant support!!!
These are great tips. I just celebrated my 3rd year blogaversary and knew from the start one day I’d have to revamp my niche along the way. This post will help when the time comes to revamp my blog or start a new one. I’m happy Pinterest worked everything out and you got a second chance at starting anew. Thanks for sharing your tips!
Aw congrats on your 3 year blogiversary!!! So exciting! Sending you all the good luck vibes!
Oh heck yeah! Lauren I am knee deep in this and need to read this! Looking at new colors, theme and brand name. I love Aileen Theme (my fav) and Lady Boss (has terrible reviews). You goooo girl boss!
Aww thank you!! Congrats on the rebranding! It can be fun!!!
This is so interesting. I’ve toyed with the idea of creating another blog to focus more specifically on one topic but I’ve never taken the plunge. I’m going to have to give it some more thought!
Thanks so much Sarah! (: Give it a try, you never know!
Wow this is so informative! I’ve always had a slight niggle about mine so I’ll be pinning this for future!
Aw thank you! I really appreciate that (:
I am not sure if i should separate the two now i love fashion and travel but also i am a therapist so i talk about self love and relationships. Idk after reading this I’m more confused on what to do.
It’s totally up to you! I found that it was better for SEO for me to separate my topics into two separate blogs!