To rebuild or not to rebuild

Do you change a website liked by Google?

[MrFishGuy]

I built a website(my first) a while ago. It's basic, it uses frames, has a javascript shopping cart, and has flash navigation buttons. I'd like to take what I learned here, and use it to rebuild the site and make it more user friendly.

The problem is that Google really likes the site. It's an commerce site and it ranks very high on almost all my keywords, including my most competitive ones.

Do I take the chance that if I rebuild it, Google will still rank it high, and I can make things better for my customers, or do I stay with it to keep my ranking? Has anyone else taken this chance and has it worked for them?

[encyclo]

You can improve it, but take it easy and step by steprather than a complete overhaul. For example, you could start by replacing the Flash navigation with a more spider-friendly one, then swap out your shopping cart, but all the time keeping the site structure and even the frames in place.

Removing the frames (if that is your aim) can be done carefully afterwards, after analysing how Google is indexing your pages. Just whatever you do, don't change the file names!

Being loved by Google is one thing, but you've also got to be loved by your users, so working on the usability side and making incremental improvements will help you greatly.

[treeline]

I recently changed a similar site, primarily by removing frames and updating product info. Google liked it even more without frames. All the #1 SERPs stayed, but often became #1 and #2. Lots of related keywords it had never placed for were suddenly in the top 5. Gained traffic coming directly into deeper pages. I would agree with keeping existing file names.

[garymacman1]

I recently did a major website redesign and I did not lose my google ranking thus far.

[sadelb]

I'm confused of one thing. Should be very easy for a lot of you. Say you have a website about sunglasses. How do you determine what keywords are for your website.. lets say you have an oakley section. Does this mean that when you type in oakley in google the website comes up automatically or do you have to put special keywords to google saying that you want your website to appear when these keywords are typed in. (like adwords) or does the website show up with the keywords you input when you design it.. (headers and tags etc) so i guess you can say my question is, how do you know of when your website will show up from certain keywords?