Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
if we change the page structures (html etc) but keep the page content the same, will we see an effect in our search engine rankings?
its taken us a long time to get anywhere in G and would hate to see the hard work go to waste because we change our page structures.
many thanks in advance
dan
I am about to transfer a site to css, may I ask, did you keep the content the same?
I am about to transfer a site to css, may I ask, did you keep the content the same?
Changing a site to css and keeping the content and urls the same...
Have done this over the past year with several clients... even changed the code order of navigation elements within the page... and have seen no problems.
Shifting global navigation blocks, though, is not the same as shifting lots of content around within your page copy, which does entail some risk, so be aware of what you're doing.
Re urls... on one site, there was consideration about whether also to change underscores to hyphens while we were making the rest of the changes, and I decided that the risk there was not worth the hypothetical (and most likely slight) benefits.
[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 6:43 pm (utc) on May 29, 2007]
Moving our site to a CMS, changing all the urls, and 301-ing everything to heck has resulted in a slight drop in traffic, although one keyterm has dropped significantly. But that's a step further than you're planning to go.
'there was consideration about whether also to change underscores to hyphens'
You don't need to keep the urls the same if you 301 them. Change if you want.
things we plan NOT to do in the redesign:
- change the URL
- change the site structure
- change page names
- change content
- change navigation links (anchors)
things we plan to change in the redesign:
- update images
- update CSS values
- change page structure ie, html page layouts
one other thing to note is that we use an e-commerce template system, so 1 small change on the product page template would see the change across 2500 pages etc.
after knowing these factors, would i be wise in leaving things alone?
and with the template system, you can appreciate that it is difficult to do a gradual site overhaul.
many thanks for all your help.
good luck!
If you build loads of new re-designed pages with new internal urls and 301 the old page urls to the new ones is the general concensus that that could be a kiss of death?
For a site with, say, SE-spider unfriendly urls, definitely go for the 301s. They're what you need to use.
But with a site that has a lot of deep inbounds, eg, and is performing well because of them, global 301s become a risk factor that I'd avoid if they aren't necessary.
[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 12:05 am (utc) on June 2, 2007]
