We recently changed a clients site from a relatively small static site (< 20 pages - we used to update the site for the client manually) to a dynamic one using a popular CMS which they can update themselves. The new site looks and works great so the client is happy and it is build with nice clean code. The copy is the same and the pages have the usual on-page optimisations you would expect - all white hat like nice title / description tags (copied over from the old site) etc. The new CMS used different URL's (not .html extension) so I 301 redirected all old URL's to the new ones.
However, before we re-launched the site we did not have access to any stats info and it wasn't until we launched the new site that the client mentioned that they were ranking extremely well for a single highly desirable keyword (and some other 2 keyword phrases) that they are no longer ranking for! It transpires that the client was doing a lot better in the search engines then we could have imagined (we admit that we messed up on this one and should have checked first)
The client is now a little confused and understandably annoyed that they have lost their rankings for these desirable keywords. I explained to them that re-launching a site can take have this affect while Google re-assesses the site but now we don't know what to do. We see the following as our options and would really appreciate any input anyone has :
1) Leave the site as it is and wait for the rankings to come back (if ever)
2) Put up the old static pages that were ranking well and have these run in-line with the new site
3) Re-write the URL's so they exactly match the old ones (with .html extension) so there is no re-direct
4) Ditch the new site and put back the old static one
Any advice greatly appreciated!
