Best strategy for optimising existing site

[nickyo]

I will shortly be taking over an undeveloped website with a lot of potential. It has been around for a few years, ranks ok - mid 1st page for various phrases within it's niche, but can do much better.

I will be looking to redesign the site & improve SEO, however I'm concerned that radical changes will be a no-no for Google, and risk the existing traffic.

Any advice on the best strategy for this? Ultimately I'm intending to;

- Redesign

- Add an inital 20 pages of content (which will be a 100% increase from existing, then a page every few days in blog style.

- Add in some baclinks (backlink profile isn't v good at moment)

Really not sure how to best stagger this redevelopment, any help greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Nick

[tedster]

I'd have no fear about Google's reaction here. Taking a site from 20 page to 40 pages is not a problem. Sane redesign is also not a problem, as long as you don't change the existing urls. Constant tweaking can be a problem, but not one time improvements.

I'd say do the redesign and add the new pages in one clean shot. Then let other websites who might link to your content know about it.