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Rebuilding High ranking site

tigger

7:49 am on Aug 1, 2010 (gmt 0)

Senior Member

tigger is a WebmasterWorld Top Contributor of All Time

joined:July 16, 2000
posts:3560
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I'm considering rebuilding a high ranking site thats number one on both G.com/ co.uk and most other regional SE's

The site has been around in its current form for 10 years and its pig ugly LOL and I hate working on the thing and whilst it does convert I'm sure I can increase that with a better more fluid design

I know I need to keep current page names and site structure but holding onto text could be an issue as the new design will probably allow more text

Is there anything I need to be watching out for when rebuilding a ranking site? has anyone rebuilt a site then lost rankings?

ta

Hoople

1:57 am on Aug 2, 2010 (gmt 0)

Senior Member from US

joined:Sept 21, 2002
posts:769
votes: 12

In other threads here on WW some of the senior folks have said minimizing the restructuring and keeping the number of 301's down has a value. This was in reference to traffic recovery post change roll-out. A few have suggested to not do it all at once as well based on their seeing a slower than expected recovery. Others suggested lining up links to new page location ahead of time before switching over. It goes without saying to update sitemaps frequently as you work as well.

How big a site are you talking: 10's of pages, 100's or 10's of thousands?

tigger

10:26 am on Aug 2, 2010 (gmt 0)

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the size of the site is between 50-100 pages so not massive. the questions is what would be the effect of having 2 designs in place so the main design would be changed over but the inner pages changed over time, perhaps 1-2 months (I'm talking effects on the SE's not the punters which I know could be a little confused, but needs must)

page names/ links will be the same, its just the site needs an update and due to work loads this can't be all done in one hit

tigger

6:18 am on Aug 3, 2010 (gmt 0)

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posts:3560
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no one else have any views?

too much information

6:27 am on Aug 3, 2010 (gmt 0)

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joined:June 16, 2003
posts:899
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I would start by making the site more CSS friendly and leave the look and content alone. Then once that sits for a while you can see if it hurt your ranking.

If all is well you can play with the CSS file to get the look you want.

* I hate reworking entire sites, but at least it should keep you busy for a while!

tigger

7:24 am on Aug 3, 2010 (gmt 0)

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joined:July 16, 2000
posts:3560
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Cheers Too Much, but we are talking "pig ugly" here and no tweaking of CSS is going to change that - its a complete rebuild thats needed not just a touch up