Procedure For Site Overhaul

[courier]

I have decided that I need to try something or move to a different format to overcome the onpage and link penalities my site has picked up over the last few years from my 10 year old site. Instead of scrapping my domain I have decided to try and refurbish it.

Is there any specific's of how this should be undertaken and not get further penalities from Google animal algorithms.

I am not sure how I should tackle this. Already the simple changes I have made to some internal link text has made a difference. I have decided to modernise the page text with a complete re-write. This will take around 12 to 24 months to complete, so I want to do it right.

1. Page Titles - Need re-written to make them both user friendly and a modern feel. They are heavly laden with keywords so changing to a less spammy look.
Question - Is it safe to rewrite page titles? I see others doing just that and have dropped down several pages.

If title re-writes cause a problem would it be better to use a new url structure

2. New URL Struscture or Not - If I use a new URL Struscture is it better to leave as a 404 or use a 301 to redirect to the new page.

I am very well place with Bing, and making some money from them, thus is why I have waited so long before trying anything with the site.

[seoskunk]

I can only give opinion here but here are my thoughts

2. Since this makes the other question irrelevant I thought we would start here. If you feel your problem is inbound links then you would be confident and wise to change url structure and 404 the old pages. If its content related keep the old structure and 301 where you have to change url.

1. I think page title has been dialed down as a ranking factor so your fairly safe to change in the way you describe. Try to summarize pages and avoid making them advertising messages.

[Planet13]

@ courier:

"Already the simple changes I have made to some internal link text has made a difference."

Could you explain more what you did and what are the results you have observed?

[courier]

@seoskunk
If the pages are 404 do you think this would extinguish external link value, or are links seen as to the domain as well as the specific page?

@Planet13

I really did not expect changinging link text to make a difference, was doing it as a sort of update to make the site look better. The internal link structure was as follows:

Get Widgets Blue
Get Widgets Red
Get Widgets Orange

Get Widgets Blue etc was the exact match keyword I was looking

Simply I changed these, so most menu's read now

Get widgets in

Blue
Red
Orange

All pages were buried so much that I was getting very little to no searches. Since changing this alone I have seen searches appearing in the top ten again. A very little ammount, but it is a lot more than I had within the last few years.

What I have noticed about a site on the move, leaping up the results is that they have their meta title wrote as (example text only):

Get Widgets Blue - The Lowest Prices for the Best Widgets

On page text reads 2 mentions of Get Widgets Blue, once in H1 text and once in the body of the page.

I am aware that Google does not want you to mention lots of times the keyword, but has anyone seen what the best ammount is?