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They are also extremely difficult to manage and some of the code is mildly erratic, to say the least. So redesign the damn things! you say.
However, my problem is that at least in part due to their age they do extremely well on many search engines for some pretty competitive terms. And search engine can get pretty temperamental with major site changes.
My knowledge of design and promotion has improved a great deal since I made these sites, so why won't the whole thing be a storming success? Or should I not take the risk?
I waded through about a hundred site search pages before posting this, so if i'm going over old ground then go easy on me ;)
If you are changing file names, then a 301 redirect from the old file to the new file is suggested. In the case of Google, you need to get that PR transferred and the new url into the index. Its going to take a couple of updates but it will happen.
If your site redesign includes stripping out deprecated html and moving all of your styling attributes to external css, then you should expect to do as well if not better than before. Shoot for more streamlined html and smaller page sizes. Concentrate on moving your core content to the top of the html right after the <body> tag.
Make sure to move all that javascript to an external file too. Anything that you can remove from the html and place into an external file will prove to be of benefit. Not only from an SE point of view, but also from a site management perspective.
This actually applies to a few different sites, so I will answer for the one that is highest priority for me at the moment.
>>Are you planning on keeping the same file names
I thought this would be wise. A minor problem is that I cannot control hosting (long story) and I have no access to htaccess to set up 301s if I move pages, so changing filenames would be problematic.
>>a redesign concentrating on optimization from the core
>>stripping out deprecated html and moving all of your styling attributes to external css
Thanks for the excellent suggestions pageoneresults. I must say though, that optimisation is not really the issue here. Although there is always room for more content etc, pages that I haven't changed in up to 12 months are still top for the keywords they were back then. I'm not looking to improve optimisation, more avoid breaking anything ;)
My thinking is 'if it ain't broke...', which would not normally be my attitude except that i'm still worried about potential ill-effects.
Would it be better for me to work in the redesign gradually, say clean up the code first, and then work on CSS etc? The site doesn't even use tables at the moment, so implementing some cool CSS should be easy.
OK, i'm clearly being a coward, but I guess my concern comes down to possible situations like this:
I clean up the code and get some CSS going. Because I remove lots of surplus code, the 'weighting' of various elements of my page could change fairly substantially. What if removing this code gives my keywords too much weight? If i'm currently top with a page full of out of date tags etc. surely the only was is down?
Thanks everyone for any advice and korkus, pageone and quinn for earlier coments.
Craig
I don't believe that would be the case. If there is indeed any benefit SE wise in removing surplus code (and I think there is), then I think that's a different section of the algo to keyword weight, and the effect should only be positive.
I've been working slowly through all my own sites over the last 6 months, sprucing up the look and simplifying the code, and I've seen no negative effects on ranking so long as I kept the existing content and ensured incoming links weren't messed up.
I'm still feeling a bit cautious about the whole affair, so I will try it on some less important (and underperforming) pages and see how it goes.
