Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Have a website with a homepage that is not updated for a couple of years (I know it's bad!) and I would like to change this.
However given the current instability of Google I am kinda scared to go ahead with it.
Here is what I want to do: replace 2 pages linked from almost every pages of the site, including the homepage.
I want to replace with pages that talk about more up to date concepts which means that the subjects don't have the same "keywords".
> Should I update the homepage first or internal pages?
> Should I go slowly and update one page by one page (wow, this could take a while
> Should I keep the old pages on the sitemap or simply remove them from the site?
The site is performing well on a few keywords, please advise - Is there someone that experienced significant drops in rankings doing such thing?
Homepage first, with perhaps a message about what you are doing, for the human visitors. Otherwise, if they show up, see that it's way out of date, they aren't coming back. At least some kind of message saying "yes, we are alive and updating" would be a good idea - some will disagree with me, but I think you need to speak to your human visitors first and foremost.
>> Should I keep the old pages on the sitemap or simply remove them from the site?
I would create an archives page and link those old pages off of that page. Even if it's outdated, it may still be bringing in traffic, and you shouldn't ignore that. Make sure that on those old pages, you have clear directions to relevant new content. Not everybody lands on your homepage, and people maybe landing on these pages.
Overall, I would say slow and steady so that the bots (and humans) see that there is new content being released on a fairly regular schedule. You could crank out a lot of new/updated content now, and if your site allows for it, you could have it publish the content slowly over the next few weeks.
