Site Redesign - Does It Always Mean Lost Ranking?

[IsItUPYet]

Reciently my main competitor redesigned their site and dropped out of G for about 6 months does this always happen as i am thinking of redesigning my site?

[Hugene]

Hello everyone. I took a small break from the webmaster game, but now I am back at it and I immediately found what I was looking for on this forum.

A little background:
- site up for over 3 years now, ranks 1 to 3 on a few competitive keywords.
- little SEO, but we have more than respectable amounts of original self-created content.
- the layout relies heavily on tables.
- site is dynamically generated, no directory structures in the url (its all under www.widjet.com/index.php?article=id)

I have had little time to work on in the last year (so little new content) and the site hasn't moved down in the SERPS.

I want to change it now:
1- redesign the graphics: I am tired of the look and we are in an area where looks mater
2- reduce the number of sections: I can no longer maintain the entire site, it requires too much new content creation.

Here is what I plan to do, please let me know if this a good strategy:

1- redesign the graphic content of all pages BUT
2- make sure old links point to pages with same textual content
3- try to keep the static wording on my home page the same
4- simplify the layout, remove some of the nested tables
5- keep very similar page titles
6- do a blitz inbound link creation campaign

I am not on a dedicated sever, I don't know how to play with 301 redirects, but I believe I wont have too because all the old links will still work.

I don't plan to remove content, just reorganize it tightly.

I guess the main question is: does googlebot mind coming back to a site to find a different html but same textual content? Will it be smart enough to see that there has been little relevant change?

Thanks a lot

[wmuser]

No it doesnt always happens,they must have done it the wrong way
Keep as many original URLs and internal link structure as you can

[AjiNIMC]

Whenever I redesigned my site I saw,

better traffic,
better conversion ratio,
and better ranking

as with every redo I put more simplicity in, wrt to UI and code.

[Hugene]

Thanks. I will not be able to keep the exact same internal link structure because some sections are disappearing.

However, I will make a dedicated archive page, which will contain links to all previous pages. Is this a good idea?

[tedster]

The archive is an excellent idea. I've seen it pull out several re-designs from generating a drastic loss in traffic. Go for it, and link from the Home Page footer (or higher on the page if many of your visitors will want to reference it)

[etgsgroup]

If you use many graphic. You can lost ranking.
Google bot like text.

[M_Bison]

Just a thought....if your design is entirely CSS, then google wouldn't even notice a redesign.