Site redesign. Possible SEO problems?
-
Hi!
Our website has enjoyed good rankings for lots of our keywords for the past 9years.
Over the years the site became heavy, so we want to change the design radically. Content, filenames, titles, urls etc. will all remain identical just the change of a template. The new one is minimalistic and responsive design. We are worrying this may drop our domain or page authority and kill all our past SEO efforts.
**How to do this with the least harm to our rankings? Anything we need to avoid?**Articles/advice/suggestions comments on design and SEO would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you for your help!
Alina
-
Thank you for a reply, Andy!
Now the other question: how much can we change the content not to lose the ranking? Does the change of titles and the content structure influence? What if I leave the keywords but change the content structure?
-
Now the other question: how much can we change the content not to lose the ranking? Does the change of titles and the content structure influence? What if I leave the keywords but change the content structure?
-
Screaming Frog's a great one, a few Google Chrome plug-ins I would use are:
ReDirect Path -> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/redirect-path/aomidfkchockcldhbkggjokdkkebmdll
Check My Links -> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/check-my-links/ojkcdipcgfaekbeaelaapakgnjflfglfIf you use these in combination you will hopefully be able to find any errors in your new design.
-
Fully agree with Andy. The trick with these kinds of design updates is to have a clear testing plan to make certain that, even though you don't think URLs, content, titles etc are being changed, they actually haven't changed. There can be many edge cases where, even though the template change should interact the same way with all content, titles, URL rewrites etc, it just might not. You want to confirm any such cases have been found and fixed before going live with the new design.
Paul
-
She clearly states "Content, filenames, titles, urls etc. will all remain identical just the change of a template." so redirects don't enter into the equation here.
-
301 Re-directs all the way ensuring that all of your old URLs resolve to relevant content. One thing I would advise against is a splash screen and making sure that all of your content is available within 3-4 clicks.
Good Luck
-
Hi Alina,
Changing your site is always a daunting task, but as long as it is for the better, there is no reason why you should lose out.
I have done this a few times now and each time I have been improving the site and then seen a positive jump in traffic and conversions.
All you are doing is changing the template, but when completed, do check the site over with Screaming Frog Spider just to make sure the new template hasn't created any obscure pages or issues that you can't see.
-Andy
-
Hello Alina, recently i changed design of my website (the same you want to do) but i did not change the url's and titles because if i have made that i have lost rankings.
My advice for you is that you change your design but try not take the url's and titles, at least url's. Finally, if you do that, please, 301 re-direction, but you'll lose rankings, sure.
Regards
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
-
Unsolved URL dynamic structure issue for new global site where I will redirect multiple well-working sites.
Dear all, We are working on a new platform called [https://www.piktalent.com](link url), were basically we aim to redirect many smaller sites we have with quite a lot of SEO traffic related to internships. Our previous sites are some like www.spain-internship.com, www.europe-internship.com and other similars we have (around 9). Our idea is to smoothly redirect a bit by a bit many of the sites to this new platform which is a custom made site in python and node, much more scalable and willing to develop app, etc etc etc...to become a bigger platform. For the new site, we decided to create 3 areas for the main content: piktalent.com/opportunities (all the vacancies) , piktalent.com/internships and piktalent.com/jobs so we can categorize the different types of pages and things we have and under opportunities we have all the vacancies. The problem comes with the site when we generate the diferent static landings and dynamic searches. We have static landing pages generated like www.piktalent.com/internships/madrid but dynamically it also generates www.piktalent.com/opportunities?search=madrid. Also, most of the searches will generate that type of urls, not following the structure of Domain name / type of vacancy/ city / name of the vacancy following the dynamic search structure. I have been thinking 2 potential solutions for this, either applying canonicals, or adding the suffix in webmasters as non index.... but... What do you think is the right approach for this? I am worried about potential duplicate content and conflicts between static content dynamic one. My CTO insists that the dynamic has to be like that but.... I am not 100% sure. Someone can provide input on this? Is there a way to block the dynamic urls generated? Someone with a similar experience? Regards,
Technical SEO | | Jose_jimenez0 -
YouTube vs. LimeLight - What are the SEO pros and cons of each platform for on-site video viewing?
Are there any SEO benefits of hosting on-site videos using LimeLight? I know the various benefits of using YouTube but before going forward with a site redesign I want to hear what others have to say. Thanks, Jake
Technical SEO | | JakeMatulewicz1 -
Mobile site SEO: faulty redirects.. 204! help pls!
Hello, I have recently read that a m.site.com should provide the same number of pages as the non-mobile site. Is this so? Is this why my mobile site won't rank? Our competitors have their standard websites showing up before our m.website.com version... Also, do I have to get a whole new set of mobile links for my mobile site? In WT, I am seeing absolutely no inbound links, which seems odd? Any help would be greatly appreciated. 🙂 Thanks in advance
Technical SEO | | lfrazer0 -
SEO across sites built using Google Web Toolkit
Hi guys, General question around general SEO best practices, such as url and title, and how they fit in with Google Web Toolkit built sites that use a www.site.com/#!category=12345 format. The space we're getting into is heavily competitive, with many established players doing standard SEO well. I know there are some speed benefits to using GWT, however I'd like to better understand the SEO impact, if any, before the site development progresses too far. Cheers, Jez
Technical SEO | | jez0000 -
Duplicate content problem?
Hello! I am not sure if this is a problem or if I am just making something too complicated. Here's the deal. I took on a client who has an existing site in something called homestead. Files cannot be downloaded, making it tricky to get out of homestead. The way it is set up is new sites are developed on subdomains of homestead.com, and then your chosen domain points to this subdomain. The designer who built it has kindly given me access to her account so that I can edit the site, but this is awkward. I want to move the site to its own account. However, to do so Homestead requires that I create a new subdomain and copy the files from one to the other. They don't have any way to redirect the prior subdomain to the new one. They recommend I do something in the html, since that is all I can access. Am I unnecessarily worried about the duplicate content consequences? My understanding is that now I will have two subdomains with the same exact content. True, over time I will be editing the new one. But you get what I'm sayin'. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | devbook90 -
Wordpress Canonical Problem
I'm using wordpress for my website but m unable to implement Canonical tag property for pages under the same category, Like for matt's blog: The Tag is same .. for all pages under that category: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/type/googleseo/ & http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/type/googleseo/page/2/ is it some hack or some plugin ? please suggest! thanks
Technical SEO | | AnkitRawat0 -
Site maps, Is there any benefit?
I have a relatively simple and small site (60 pages). All of it is crawlable and there is nothing I want non follow. So, is there any real benefit to a sitemap since Google can get to all the site anyway? Do they give the site more credence or something because it's there? I guess as an aside, are there any favorite sites that will generate a site map? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Banknotes0 -
Why does my site have a PageRank of 0?
My site (www.onemedical.com) has a PageRank of 0, and I can't figure out why. We did a major site update about a year ago, and moved the site from .md to .com about 9 months ago. We are crawled by Google and rank on the first page for many of our top keywords. We have a MozRank of 4.59. I figured this is something that would just take time to work out of the system, but nothing seems to change while we patiently wait. One more thing to note - when a user comes to the homepage (city selector) and selects their region they will then be cookied and directed to their relevant city site on subsequent visits. But even our city-specific pages (ie www.onemedical.com/sf) have pageranks of 0. My management team keeps asking me about this and I suspect there is something silly that we keep overlooking...but for the life of me, can't figure it out. Any help would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | OneMedical0