Deleting whole site, and start over again = bad?

[poweri]

I have a website with +200 pages in Google. Now I want to make the website look more professional, and that means deleting all pages and use new page names. Is this smart of must I keep the pages and ADD new ones?

[tedster]

It's not usually a wise thing to do unless you're forced into it by some circumstance. The adjustment period on Google, and the loss of any power that established internal backlinks give you are part of the challenge. The traffic loss can be extreme for a while.

What you can do is use a 301 permanent redirect to send requests for the old urls to the best match out of your new urls. This also transfers any backlink power you may have already built.

You might find some help in this thread: URL structure redesign [webmasterworld.com]

That thread and other key discussions are available in the Hot Topics area [webmasterworld.com], which is always pinned to the top of this forum's index page.