Website Redesign - Will it hurt SERP?

[howardd]

Hi - I am planning to redesign my blog and I was wondering if this will affect my rankings?

The new website template (custom designed) is much more user and seo friendly. The content, url structure, internal linking structure, meta tags, and site structure will remain exactly the same, but the visual design will be different (new sidebar widgets, and slightly different layout on inner pages).

The current website is ranking very well (mostly top 5), has a healthy backlink profile, strong social media presence, and great traffic.

I have heard that switching to a new template will dramatically hurt the rankings. Is this true? Are there any exceptions? Any ways I can prevent the rankings from dropping?

Would really appreciate your input. Thanks in advance.

Howard

[howardd]

Matthew, much appreciated.

Thankfully I don't need to worry about redirects since it's just a transition to a new template. About 90% of the other elements will remain intact.

Checking webmaster tools after the transition sounds really helpful.

ps. Thanks to everyone for your great responses!

[howardd]

Thanks for the detailed answer. This, in itself, could make a great article

After reviewing the items you mentioned, I actually realized some of the things I had neglected.

Apparently after transferring all the content to the demo website, some of the elements had changed, including: date of the posts, H tags, Authors, and few of the meta tags. So glad I caught your response in time to fix those issues.

For the most part, the new site is an improved version of the current site so if the rankings drop, I'll be surprised.

After I make the transition, I'll let you know the results. Hopefully this could make a good case scenario for the community.

Thanks again!

Howard

[Webrevolve]

I think you have a good approach to this, and so, all things being the same, a refresh of the site should not hurt.

You mention that "content, url structure, internal linking structure" will all remain the same - if this is true and you keep everything in this bracket 'as-is' then you should be fine.

The most common reason rankings are lost when implementing a new site is re-directs, or the lack a redirect strategy to be more clear.

As your site structure / url structure is going to remain in-tack, then you wont really need to consider mass redirects.

However, here is what I would do just in case:

Before Launch:

Create a report of top linked to pages using Open Site Explore

Create a report of top content from the last few months from Google Analytics

Map all the URLs from the current site, use screaming from or something

After Launch:

Submit XML sitemap to webmaster tool

Review and improve on-page content

Monitor traffic in Google analytics, view top content for the period after launch and compare to the report you created prior to launch

Monitor and fix crawl errors in webmaster tools if any

Attract new links

Submit new XML sitemap (two weeks post launch)

Keep developing great content

[DennisSeymour]

keep it simple. The work and how much your rankings will change (usually just temporary) will be dependent on what you focus to work on and how big the site is

Just do things one at a time.

• Make sure you fix all errors ASAP (images, internal links etc)
• Redirect the old urls to the new urls
• Make sure the speed of loading is the same of faster.
• Basically, just do things quickly and optimise.

Run screaming frog after and fix all the remaining errors. Youll probably see more errors in webmaster tools once your site gets recrawled but those will probably be easy fixes.

Remember, just focus and get it done ASAP and youll be fine.

[MattAntonino]

This is a tough question to answer.  Technically yes, your SERPs will probably change. Hurt?  That's hard to say.

I'm going to list a few reasons your SERs may change. I don't want to argue with everyone about which factors matter, etc. but these are some potential reasons your rankings may change (and other SEOs may disagree on which of these actually matter. I'm including them for the sake of completeness and to show that there are MANY reasons a site change will bounce your rankings.)

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These are just some things that may change:

1) Site speed. You could be faster (better design, fewer big images) or you could be slower (that would hurt your rankings.)

2) Site structure. If you had a Wordpress site for instance that used to list all your post titles as H2 and your subheadings as H3 and now all your titles are H3, that is likely to at least somewhat affect your structure and yes, you may see some SERP changes.

3) Code / text ratio/density whatever you want to call it.  Most SEOs will tell you very straightforwardly that "keyword density" is dead. And yet we've tested that this is a moderation thing. If you have a word too many times, you get penalized.  Too few and it's just assumed to be one word among many, not a topic.  The hint is to fall somewhere between say oh I dunno, 2 and 30 for most pages, right?  Now, I've done a test that suggested if the word was on the page say 15 times and that was 2% of the whole page text, it wouldn't be penalized.  Same word, same 15 times, and reduce the extraneous code so it's 10%?  Gets penalized every time.   So while on page keyword density is dead, MY (albeit flawed) study told me that changing code tremendously could affect your keywords if you tend to be on the higher (penalty) end.

**4) Validation.  **Again, I'm being controversial and I understand many SEOs disagree with this one.  However, you're asking what "may" hurt - and if your site was 100% valid before (or close) and it has a lot of errors now, that would (in my opinion) affect your SEO.

5) Page Age.  Hurt or help - it's hard to say.  Google normally prefers fresh content so you may actually see some improvements on this.  However, when Google has "seasoned in" your pages and you change them, they aren't always 100% awesome at getting your rank exactly the same after any sort of change or even date update.  (We had a news site for awhile that had ranking issues because older articles would get their "last edited" date updated frequently and Google would often drop older, successful URLs back 3-4 pages when we updated. It made no sense but ... ya, Google.)

6) Page layout.  Google quality guideliens say that "the page layout on the highest quality pages makes the main content immediately visible."  If your update makes more or less content show up "above the fold" as it were, you may see SERP changes for better or worse.

7) Breadcrumbs and Navigation.  If your old theme had poor (or amazing) navigation and the new one is opposite, you could see SERP movement for sure. Google loves its breadcrumbs. If you had them and removed them, you could fall a bit.  If you didn't have them and you do now, you could rise.  Breadcrumbs signal good user experience and Google rewards that.

Mobile optimization.  If the old site wasn't responsive/mobile friendly and the new one is, that could affect your mobile SERPs (and possibly your desktop ones ... depending on how its implemented.)

9) Analytics. I've posited before that Google must use some data from Analytics - time on site, pages per visit, bounce rate, etc.  .They seem to correlate VERY strongly with my "most visited pages" and those with the highest rank.  I would suggest that if your user experience dramatically improves, your SERPs may as well.

10) Schema.  You said the structure is essentially remaining the same but if the new one allows for review stars, authorshop markup, photo schema or whatnot, that could improve SERP position.

[JCurrier]

Google will have to spider the site before any loss in rankings due to design, right? So, if there is a drop in rankings, it won't necessarily be recovered in a re-index.

But, so long as there are no errors and the site remains the same structurally and content wise, there shouldn't necessarily be any issue. Even if there are no errors with the new theme as far as SEO goes, if the new design affects the load speed, this could affect the ranking of your page.

[FedeEinhorn]

That is only truth if the new theme that you are going to use has errors. If it has been SEO'ed and all the content will be the same, you may some rankings decline until Google spiders the new site and re index it. But that shouldn't take very long.

You need to think on the users first, will the users love the new site? If they will, then Google will follow, don't worry about that.