Interesting Website Redesign Question

[gdawg]

I am faced with a very interesting decision regarding my companies website redesign project. The current website is a job board site that has around 100 pages, plus thousands of dynamic pages. The original project plan was estimated to take between 3-4 months. Now we are proposing an alternative solution that would speed up the project.

Our proposal is to overlay a new front end design onto the current website. We would keep the current backend and database structure for the short term. The linking structure and navigationw would stay the same with this new overlayed front end design. The content on all the main pages would change completely. Obviously, the new content will probably make it necessary to change all the titles and tags as well. So in this first phase of the new front end the major changes will be fresh, new content. In regards to the engines I think they will just see that we refreshed all of our content and should hopefully give us a little bump in rankings.

The second phase 2-3 months after the first phase will be integrating a whole new database and backend system. The entire site navigation, file structure, file and folder names and internal linking structure will change completely. We will implement proper 301 redirects so that we do not lose any existing rankings. In my opinion we should probably also receive some type of increase in rankings as a result of these changes.

So I would like your opinion's on this and any insight you might provide into this unique scenario. Do you think we risk losing any current rankings? Obviously, I would like to do the entire project at once because we would probably recieve the most possible increase in rankings as a result. At the same time maybe by doing phases like this the engines will view it as us frequently updating our site and keeping things fresh.

[Red_Eye]

I have had some experiance of this sort of thing i.e. short term refresh long term redsign. I would say that if you are intent on making the long term changes don's bother with the short term refresh, as this will just extend the development process.

The problem with short term refreshes is that they still take time to develope test and maintain, and this time could be spend working on the longer term project. Also what do you stand to gain from doing it? your site might look nicer, but would your traffic increase if you are using the same old content. Also I have found that quite often a tempory fix is often quite a bit longer than tempory.

If you have the resource to run 2 projects at a time then do both otherwise just stick to your original goals. Unless you stand to gain a lot from doing the refresh.

As far as loosing rankings, I have redesigned my site a number of times (this even involved switching from php to asp.net) now my site is ranking higher than it ever was.

[caveman]

As far as loosing rankings, I have redesigned my site a number of times (this even involved switching from php to asp.net) now my site is ranking higher than it ever was.

Red_Eye, I'd love to hear more about your experience with this since it sounds so positive.

Redirect Issues
There have been countless examples of sites changing file names/extensions, 301'ing properly, and still seeing their rankings plummet for 1-6 months or sometimes ever longer.

Anti-SEO Filter Issues
I'm also aware of several instances where largescale, sitewide changes of the type that gdawg is contemplating ended up really hurting a site's rankings dramatically, albeit only short term. If gdawg is really looking at sitewide changes of everthing from page contents to (more importantly) page titles, I've seen some short term devastating effects.

Short-Term Vs. Long-Term Issues
To be clear though, longer term, these changes are usually for the better, if the redesign and SEO teams know what they are doing. The sites just need to endure some short term pain to get to a better place.

[Red_Eye]

CaveMan.

Redirect Issues

When I changed from php to asp.net I simply setup permanant redirects from the old pages to the new, I am always very carful about this to make sure the new content pages resemble the old content pages, as the visitor is looking for that content or similar. On occasion they are redirected back to home page. I think that I may always have had favorable results as the site improvements I have made have allowed me to add more usful content at the same time improving the SEO.

Anti-SEO Filter Issues

I agree I have seen this but if it does happen it is mostly short term, unless you have done something drastically wrong.

Short-Term Vs. Long-Term Issues

This is true. The point I was making is about the design process. Often I have presented a project plan to redsign to a brief. Then someone (usually in marketing) says, no that will take to long, the brief then changes to get some superfical short term changes. This essentially splits 1 project into 2 both of which need design, development, testing and support.

[gdawg]

Thanks guys for your opinions. I think you both some valid points and appreciate your insight. Like I said in my post I personally believe that the entire project should be done in 1 phase to minimize the impact of any fluctuations caused by all of the changes to the site. In the real world, other forces sometime prevail over SEO like upper management so it may not be possible. Thanks again!

[caveman]

Red_Eye, thanks! gdawg, np. ;-)