How to change a site without loosing ranking .
-
How to change a site without loosing ranking .I have a WP site for my own company .locally i have good ranking for few keywords .but I decided to change site theme and improve site contents further .but still i am not sure how to change these thing and doing without loosing ranking .expert advices welcome .
-
Hi Chandana
There are a few major things to consider when updating the site:
**Keep same URLs **
Maybe the single most important factor is to not change allready ranking URLs. I do understand that changing the look of the site might require this, but you should at least do your absolute best not to change them. Also if you have a mutlilevel structure such as www.example.com/category/page be very careful changing the category since that will mean you also change all subpages.
I would check pagerank and incoming traffic from search for each of the pages, then make a note on what pages are most important. You can use www.opensiteexplorer.org and Google Analytics for this.
301 redirects
If you have to change your URL structure then make sure you do proper 301 redirects to the new URLs. This will not prevent you from loosing ranking on the page but will help you recover faster.
On-page SEO
Make sure your new site is optimized as far as possible for on-page SEO. Before you move, test the old page, then make sure the new page is atleast as good. Maybe also a good idea to look at headings and try to follow the same structure. Use the quite excellent tool from SEOMoz for this. You should find it here: http://www.seomoz.org/tools
Internal Link structure
This is not all that easy but try to look at how your internal link structure looks at the old site and move this to the new site. What footer links you got? What keywords you use in the links? What menus you use? If your new site is going for a dropdown menu this typically adds a massive amount of links to your site. This might be important.
Be careful
When making new sites its easy to get too busy designing and building the new site. Just play it cool and make sure not to make any mistakes such as leaving a no index tag or forgetting to remove a default robots.txt. Take an extra day to go through it all.
Spot mistakes as quick as you can
Make sure to use Google Webmastertools and Analytics to spot any problems and correct them as fast as you can.
Hope these simple tips helps you get going with your move.
Good luck and hope your new site turns out well.
Fredrik
-
If you going to change contents it doesn't matter if it's old or new theme, the result will be the same. It is most important that you stick to one main rule. Good and attractive content for your visitors. Not from expert point of view but I would do that if I'm in the same situation.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How to rank a page on established site quickly
Hi, I'm looking for information about how I can rank an e-commerce category page quickly from a link building perspective. It usually takes me 6-12 months to rank these pages within the top 3 spots with link building, but I would like to get results faster. My site is established for more than 10 years and performs well in Google organic search. Here is what usually works over a 6-12 month time span: 15-40 links within articles on DA 15-60 sites, built within 6-12 months More than 75% of the links are from blogs Variety of anchor text Combination of follow/nofollow Deep links to product pages within the category we're trying to rank Might be important to note that it was easy for us to get category pages listed in DMOZ categories, when it was still around but it didn't seem to play any role in getting ranked faster. Note: We only build links on real sites with real traffic and decent performance metrics. No PBNs or other crap sites. I'd sincerely appreciate it if anyone can make any suggestions or point me towards helpful info. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Choice0 -
Checking Rankings Again & Again Can Drop Rankings
Is it possible that if i check my google rankings again & again it can drop ranking?Like checking where do my keywords rank every hours rank drop the rankings? Because this indirectly affects the CTR. Might be because of it? No one has faced such an weird thing before.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | welcomecure0 -
Google favoring old site over new site...
Hi, I started a new site for a client: www.berenjifamilylaw.com. His old site: www.bestfamilylawattorney.com was too loaded up with bad links. Here's the weird part: when you Google: "Los Angeles divorce lawyer" you see the old site come up on the 21st page, but Google doesn't even show the new site (even though it is indexed). It's been about 2 weeks now and no change. Has anyone experienced something like this? If so, what did you do (if anything). Also, I did NOT do a 301 redirect from old to new b/c of spammy links. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mrodriguez14400 -
Making unresponsive site responsive, should I expect any ranking penalties?
Hello, I have a website made with asp.net and ranking quite well for a number of competitive keywords like in google top 10 results for more than a dozen competitive keywords. Recently in order for better user experience, I am having it developed so it is fully responsive for all screen resolutions. Basically all the design element / site text will remain the same including color scheme / layout etc outwardly but internally this will change everything all the css / page html (tables converted to divs) etc. Now my question is: 1. Will this considered by bots a complete site overhaul and ranking will take a hit even if I stay with current platform i.e. asp.net? 2. While making design responsive I can also develop a wordpress theme, which will make it easier to work with the website as the site does not require any programming. So if I also change the platform like from MS IIS/asp to Apache / php how will search engine bots take this? 3. If above in fact will result in ranking drop, how much time will it take for the rankings to get back to normal? Note that I use extensionless urls so the urls will remain the same as well even if we convert from asp to php. Sorry for long details but question is bugging me from weeks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hpk0 -
Spammy sites that link to a site
Hello, What is the best and quickest way to identify spammy sites that link to a website, and then remove them ( google disavow?) Thank you dear Moz, community - I appreciate your help 🙂 Sincerely, Vijay
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vijayvasu0 -
New Domain name vs Low Ranked Existing Site
I am going to build a new site. I could hang it off an existing site with similar content or buy a new keyword rich domain and start over. The existing site does not have much trust or authority beyond the domain being registered for 5 plus years. I would prefer to start over and build linksfrom scratch but I realize we are starting at the bottom. The keywords we will be competing against are not super competetive so I think we can get ranking within 6 months or so. These post Panda days I am rethinking everything so any input is appreciated. I did a similar niche site a few years ago and found the site ranked well fairly quickly for its little nice. Today though it may be different. I have no experience in buying domains and would have no idea where to start there. New or existing? Thanks for any input.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Reportcard0 -
Separate Site or should we incorporate it into our main site
Hello, We have a website to sell personal development trainings. The owners want to start 2 blogs - one for each owner - that promotes their personal coaching practices. What's the SEO advantages of embedding both blogs in the current site vs starting 2 brand new blogs with their names as the domain names?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
Does having many 302 redirects on a site hurt rankings?
I am working with an affiliate website which has many product listings but the "Buy Now" button on each product listing is an external link (affiliate link) to the appropriate product page on the actual website where the product can be bought. Each of these external links passes through an internal redirect, which is implemented as a 302. Consequently, when SEOmoz crawls that site, it gives me a warning that there are hundreds of 302 redirects on the site. Do you think this will hurt the site's potential to rank? Should I remove the redirects and leave them as direct links to the external site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlexFusman0