Adding/changing content will drop my rankings within search engines (M

[Mike34]

Adding/changing content (banners, text, etc.) will drop my site's rankings within search engines (for example - MSN Search) after crawler visits my site again?

I have few sites ranked top-5 in MSN. And I need to make few changes like adding banner on top of the page & changing few text parts, but I am afraid that this will cause my sites to drop in rankings. I don't want to take this risk...

What is your experience here?

Thanks a lot!

[caveman]

Any time a page is changed, there is some risk that it's precise ranking will drop. There is also a chance it will stay the same, or go up. Unless you plan to become a full time student of the SE's algorythm's, you're better off making the changes that you think need making. If they improve the page, not only will they likely be strengthening it from the SE's points of view, but readers may stay longer...and more inbound links may come...all of which are good things from an SEO perspective.

[Lord Majestic]

Pure HTML (non-text) changes (ie different src for banner image) should not affect ranking in any decent search engine.