Build New Site Without Losing Rankings
-
Good morning SEOmoz community. I have a question which I am pretty sure I already know the answer to, however i thought I would reach out to my fellow experts to see if anyone had some great advice.
I would really like to give my website a makeover. i have two thoughts on this, one is to scrap the site completely and start fresh, the other would be to only change it visually, but keep all the content and on-page optimization. I am terrified of losing my rankings. I am ranked position 1 and 2 for highly competitive terms and have another 15 - 20 keywords on page 1. Any advice would be tremendously appreciated!!!
-
Thank you!
-
Thanks!!
-
Webby,
Here is some additional reading. Website makeover without losing rankings
-
Hey there
Option 2 would be the best way to maintain your rankings. If you can ensure that the content, on-page elements and links pointing towards the page stay the same, as in the URLs remain the same, then there should be no reason why changing the design would result in a rankings drop. A design change would only trigger a drop if it came along with loads of ads above the fold, or if it included hidden links on the page through the use of CSS, in order pass PageRank elsewhere.
If you wanted to keep the elements the same but did want to change the URLs, I would ensure that you take any old URLs that have been changed and add a 301 redirect to the new URL. This will ensure all of the inbound links are passed on.
Hope this helps.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Are slides how's etc the new Splash Pages?
I just did SEO audits of approx 50 websites in the tourism sector. Nearly all had poor Google Pagespeed ratings, partly down to that, among other factors. I also feel that slideshows,, large images and videos in headers are poor for usability. I say get the content people need to engage with in front of them asap Are there any stats or studies that can provide insight on this? I've been telling those with these designs to keep an eye on bounce rates and let that guide them
Web Design | | anndonnelly0 -
What’s the best tool to visualize internal link structure and relationships between pages on a single site?
I‘d like to review the internal linking structure on my site. Is there a tool that can visualize the relationships between all of the pages within my site?
Web Design | | QBSEO0 -
My news site not showing in "In the news" list on Google Web Search
I got a news website (www.tapscape.com) which is 6 years old and has been on Google News since 2012. However, whenever I publish a news article, it never shows up "In the news" list on Google Web Search. I have already added the schema.org/NewsArticle on the website and have checked it if it's working or not on Google structured data testing tool. I see everything shows on on the structured data testing tool. The site already has a news sitemap (http://www.tapscape.com/news-sitemap.xml) and has been added to Google webmaster tools. News articles show perfectly fine in the News tab, but why isn't the articles being shown on "In the news" list on the Google web search? My site has a strong backlink background already, so I don't think I need to work on the backlinks. Please let me know what I'm doing wrong, and how can I get it to the news articles on "In the news" list. Below is a screenshot that I have attached to this question to help you understand what I mean to say. 1qoArRs
Web Design | | hakhan2010 -
Curious why site isn't ranking, rather seems like being penalized for duplicate content but no issues via Google Webmaster...
So we have a site ThePowerBoard.com and it has some pretty impressive links pointing back to it. It is obviously optimized for the keyword "Powerboard", but in no way is it even in the top 10 pages of Google ranking. If you site:thepowerboard.com the site, and/or Google just the URL thepowerboard.com you will see that it populates in the search results. However if you quote search just the title of the home page, you will see oddly that the domain doesn't show up rather at the bottom of the results you will see where Google places "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 7 already displayed". If you click on the link below that, then the site shows up toward the bottom of those results. Is this the case of duplicate content? Also from the developer that built the site said the following: "The domain name is www.thepowerboard.com and it is on a shared server in a folder named thehoverboard.com. This has caused issues trying to ssh into the server which forces us to ssh into it via it’s ip address rather than by domain name. So I think it may also be causing your search bot indexing problem. Again, I am only speculating at this point. The folder name difference is the only thing different between this site and any other site that we have set up." (Would this be the culprit? Looking for some expert advice as it makes no sense to us why this domain isn't ranking?
Web Design | | izepper0 -
301 redirects from old site to new
hey all, we just did a site redesign and have less pages on the new site than the old. is it bad to redirect multiple pages from the old site to the same page on the new? for example redirect ...com/apps ...com/android ...com/mobile and point them all to....com/custom-apps thanks!
Web Design | | jaychow0 -
Any advice on Umbraco builds?
Hi there, I'm a php gal really, but am working with a client on a new build which will be in Umbraco. So the question to Seomozzers out there is what should I be aware of and are there any recommendations for plugins/extensions that'll help in ongoing SEO? Thanks!
Web Design | | Shivvyt0 -
Site Redesign: Bounce rate, converstion, page views, etc.
Hi Fellow Mozzers, I had a few questions regarding some analytics data we have been seeing since our redesign. Just last week we did a site design overhaul at www.lylif.com. One of the biggest changes we immediately saw was a 15-20% increase in our bounce rate. However, our conversion rates, page views, pages per visit, and site duration has increased. If anyone has some insight as to why we may be having such a large increase in our bounce rate that would be most helpful!
Web Design | | lylif11 -
The ideal SEO e-commerce site
Hi All, I am currently writing a spec for moving our current e-commerce website and it got me thinking from an SEO perspective. We are all usually restrained by the current website set-up / CMS and there are things it can never do despite how hard we push for the changes. If you had the chance to start from a blank canvas (like I do currently) what would be on your wishlist?
Web Design | | RikkiD220