Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
We are going to make huge changes in our site which is online for more than 10 years. These changes are:
1). Most of pages URL rewriting and 301 redirect from old URLs to new except Home URL.
2.) 90% of copy/content will be changed along with Home page
3.) The overall site Structure will be changed
now thing is that our most keywords (95% or so) have been covered on Home page, while the rest of are used in inner pages. I think that we will loss the ranking of these pages which we are going to change the URLs for, and it will be recovered after transferring the old pages juice to the new ones.
BUT we want to know if it will affect on our Home page ranking as well or NOT? If yes, so is there any other good way to less the risk, means will it help to gradually make the changes in copy instead of once etc etc?
Any suggestion would be greatly appreciated
Thanks
Now you're getting rid of those pages and putting new pages in their place. The new pages have no history and very tiny amounts of link-juice to pass on - at least until the 301's kick in and you get some deep links.
I would advise doing this slowly. We did the exact same thing in April and our home page has bounced around from 2-5 for it's own brand since then (this is a sub-brand and our main brand is #1 for the sub-brand term [sigh]). If I had to do it again I would have done it in phases.
Any other reply from any one would be highly appreciated !
many thanks in advance
Your inner pages are pillar, or supporting pages. The home page is thematically supported by those pages. Those links from 2nd level pages pass page rank and ranking weight back to the home page. Also, changes to text on the homepage ca causes fluctuations in ranks as well.
1. Save the entire website structure so that you can reference it later. Make sure to save exact copies of prominent pages. Also, record the logical pathways and link paths of the website including anchor text if possible. I have found Xenu Link Sleuth to be of great help in creating a decent record of the anchor text and hierarchy used.
2. Make changes slowly. Consider changing the homepage now, first, and then waiting until the new page is cached and settled. If the website is a silo hierarchy, with major second level topics one click in, and further sub topics deeper within that 'chain', consider updating the url's one silo at a time, and waiting for at least the second level page to be recached.
3. After each 301, triple check the status of the old page using a header check, making sure it shows a 301 and the 301 permanently redirects to the new page, which returns 200 OK. I aways make a point of checking each one. Of course, good old Xenu will also check these en-masse if you use that tool.
Always take things slowly and plan out every stage of the changes so that you are not left asking questions at the end.
many thanks for your reply, really you pointed out some good things
We are going to make huge changes in our site which is online for more than 10 years.
Whoa! That's ten (10) years of "solid history". We'll assume that you've achieved "authority status" at this point and are enjoying the many benefits that brings with it?
1). Most of pages URL rewriting and 301 redirect from old URLs to new except Home URL.
Good.
2.) 90% of copy/content will be changed along with Home page
Not so good. But, let's discuss further...
3.) The overall site Structure will be changed
Okay, so you've got three different layers to deal with. You're making a very large and dramatic change to a long standing historical domain. I'd definitely be reviewing each and every step with a fine tooth comb as they say. You know, one of those ACE combs. :)
Let's discuss #2, 90% of copy/content changing. When you say changing, are you saying that the "meaning" of those pages is going to change? Or, that you are fine tuning the existing pages to be more targeted? Either way, these are still "major changes". Could the changes be a bit more subtle? I mean, can you keep existing pages, expand to new pages, come back later and slowly work the older pages out of the equation? Changing the meaning of a 10 year old site would be of concern to me. I'd be looking at ways of keeping those pages intact that are performing well and slowly nurturing them into the new environment.
Now thing is that our most keywords (95% or so) have been covered on Home page, while the rest of are used in inner pages.
That's a lot of keywords to cover on the home page. Typically the home page is going to be the gateway into your upper level categories and some of your "other" levels.
I think that we will loss the ranking of these pages which we are going to change the URLs for, and it will be recovered after transferring the old pages juice to the new ones.
That would be the "typical" process but for some reason, it doesn't always happen that way for some. In your case, you've got 10 years of history to transfer. Yikes! That is somewhat monumental if you ask me. That's like moving a historical landmark from one physical location to another. And once the move takes place, there will be many who visit the old location wondering where it went. :(
BUT we want to know if it will affect on our Home page ranking as well or NOT?
There will be all sorts of things taking place and yes, the home page will be an integral part of it all. You're performing three major tasks. It will be very challenging to determine which of those three is the cause of an effect later on.
If yes, so is there any other good way to less the risk, means will it help to gradually make the changes in copy instead of once etc etc?
Always take things slowly and plan out every stage of the changes so that you are not left asking questions at the end.
Words of Wisdom
many many thanks for your outstanding reply, its very descriptive !
Let's discuss #2, 90% of copy/content changing. When you say changing, are you saying that the "meaning" of those pages is going to change? Or, that you are fine tuning the existing pages to be more targeted?
actually the old content are not just user friendly, right now we are going to add some great content which attract our users/customers, and its our mean concern of changing the content.
Words of Wisdom
hmm, we have decided to make all the changes slowly, and i will let you people know once all the changes completed and what happened after that.
once again thanks all of you people!
I was involved in a change of similar magnitude for a site which has been online since 1996 and is the 800 pound gorilla in a specialized niche.
The site was completely and totally restructured, all at once with nothing phased in. The page structure was different, the site navigation was different, new sections were added, you could count on one hand the pages that kept the same URL as before. What's more, two separate sites and a subdomain of the main site were taken offline and their content moved to the main site.
The company owner understood the SEO hazards of such massive changes, but for a variety of business reasons he wanted the site restructured. He understood the hazards, but he also understood that intelligent precautions could reduce them significantly. He was willing to pay for whatever work it would take on the technical side to ensure the smoothest possible transition in the search engines.
I was the SEO consultant tasked with ensuring that smooth transition. I was a remote team member; the rest of the technical team worked in the same office. The team spent a lot of time planning the information architecture and semantic structure for the new templates. I had input into that, but probably my biggest contribution was ensuring that the techies created 301 redirects from every old URL possible, to the equivalent new URL. It was a LOT of work. The techies lost count of how many individual redirects they set up but one estimate was nearly two thousand.
I insisted that those would be in place and ready to go so that the instant the new site went live, the redirects would be fully functional.
Setting up proper 301 redirects could not be an afterthought; it had to be an integral part of the new site launch.
I suspect the techies hated me for insisting on all those redirects, but the work paid off.
When the new site launched, there was barely a ripple in the rankings. Within a week, Google was indexing new URLs and ranking them where the old URLs had been. It took Yahoo and MSN a bit longer, and for a while some searches would show both old URLs and new, but within a month the new URLs had completely taken over the old in every search engine and rankings were stable for the most important search terms. The home page was stable, and rankings for internal pages shifted smoothly from old URLs to new.
Better still, there were significant improvements in long-tail traffic to internal pages. The new page templates had better semantic structure, and the URLs were cleaner, so even though the majority of product descriptions were the same as before, the search engines responded better. Internal pages are now pulling more long-tail organic traffic than the old version of the site ever did.
After the new site launched it was at least six weeks before I stopped expecting to wake up to a rankings disaster, but things remained stable and in some cases improved.
I'm not sure the owner realizes what a rare thing his team accomplished, to make such massive changes without experiencing turmoil in the search engines. But he was smart enough to invest in getting the details right, so we pulled it off.
Overall traffic is up compared to this time last year. Better yet, sales are up. The new site isn't the only factor in that, but it certainly helped.
It CAN be done.
The site could get even better long-tail results if some of the old product descriptions were beefed up, but that's another battle for another day ...
many thanks for sharing your experience with us ...... Of course we will do the 301 redirect carefully!
It's a very rough experience if a new site launch starts to sink into the depths of multiple urls for the same content. Recovery from that kind of trouble can be a lot tougher than doing it correctly from the start. Often the tech team is coping with new software and new logic, making their job tougher. So use a test environment and really "stress test" your urls against every kind of variation and canonical problem you can think of.
Also watch the server headers very closely for proper status codes on redirects and error handling at every level of the site, the basic server itself and any platform that you are using on top of that.
There's a great many things to test for and fix, as routine.
