Changing our homepage - what to bear in mind?
-
We're going to refresh our homepage by putting more content on it and a slightly different design.
Given that it's our highest authority page, I don't want to screw it up.
We're going to keep the titles / meta / copy the same during the transition, is there anything else I should bear in mind to avoid it plummeting down the rankings?
I ask as we have a 2nd smaller site and when I changed 1 word in the title of the homepage it lost 40 places on half its keywords. Lesson learned...
Thanks in advance for any tips
Dan
-
Thanks Alice, great advice
Dan
-
Hi Dan, wow 40 places for one word - that's harsh! I've seen a fairly common pattern on redesigns/content overhauls - rankings tend to drop immediately after major changes, but gradually rise back up (hopefully to higher than before) over the next few weeks.
Unfortunately it's very hard to predict how rankings will be affected, and given it's your home page that probably seems pretty scary. I would say:
- Change one element at a time and monitor the results. This will allow you to test exactly what's working and what;s not. So possibly add the content first, wait for any fluctuations to level out, then make the redesign.
- Run some user/AB testing to monitor the impact on visitors. This can give you some excellent data to give direction to the refresh. Even slightly different designs can have a huge impact on CTR and visitor behaviour.
Good luck with the refresh.
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
-
Homepage Ranking Issue
Hi Folks, My site https://homeontheswan.com/ has been live for a few months now. Certain pages are ranking, even some number 1 postions for prodcuct pages with certain search terms. But our homepage doesn't seem to rank in Google when searching by brand name "Home on the Swan". The page is well optimized according to Moz. Any tips / insight into why this is happening would be much appreciated. Jamie
Technical SEO | | homeontheswan10 -
Homepage indexed and cached as the wrong domain
I'm a bit baffled by this one and would love if someone in the community could help provide some clarity! In general, my website (PSG1.com) is indexed and cached correctly. The exception is that the homepage is actually cached as plasticsurgerygroupnewjersey.com, another domain we own. Header checkers all confirm that plasticsurgerygroupnewjersey.com redirects to PSG1.com, not the other way around No canonical is set for that domain. At one time, I used the Moz toolbar to view attributes and it registered PSG1.com as having a response code of both 200 and 301 to plasticsurgerygroupnewjersey.com. However, I cannot replicate this. Any idea why the homepage of PSG1.com is not indexed/cached correctly? I appreciate your wisdom!
Technical SEO | | BTeubner0 -
What is the best way to change tons of 302 for 301...
I'm doing an audit for a new client and their website has tons of 302... (more than 1000)... What is the best/fast way to change all the 302 for 301...?
Technical SEO | | Felip30 -
Keywords Rankings-Change-Bug?
Bug? or just because the change happened beyound the Top 50 within Bing & Yahoo SERPs? The Keyword Ranking for in the example "dry desulfurization" shows a change of >40 up, but the history (Google) does not show these changes. May be, it is that the change was within Yahoo and Bing Rankings, and because the keyword is not showing up within the Top 50, I just can't see? ... but Rogerbot is considering. Thanks for any response 🙂 rankings-change-bug.jpg
Technical SEO | | inlinear0 -
Big on-page changes: all at once or little by little?
Hello, I have a website with bad urls (http://www.domain.com/site/page.php will become http://www.domain.com/page.php) and bad titles (keyword stuffing) and I have to fix all of them. Should I change the urls (and, yes, make the proper 301 redirects) and get crawled by the S.E., before I give a unique title for each page or viceversa? Or maybe shoud I do everything at once? What's the best practice to minimize the ranking drop and how long will it take to resume (and increase) the previous ranking?
Technical SEO | | DoMiSoL0 -
Why won't google rank my homepage
I have a site that ranks high on the first page for it's main keyword at both Bing and Yahoo but horribly at Google. It's a domain I recently acquired and am in the process of optimizing. My goal is to improve the relevancy for the site in Google so that the site shows up better for it's main keyword. With that said I've been working on building valuable links to the page and I would like some opinions on why the homepage is not ranking for the main keyword. Instead I have a junky content page that is ranking for the term. So in the event that you have a exact match domain showing up very high in Bing and Yahoo but not in Google for the homepage, what factors would you look at? Add in the complexity that a page other than the homepage is making grounds on the exact match keyword having moved up from "not in the top 100" to the 50's, what's my best solution to ranking the homepage? The site is optimized well and most inbound links predominantly point to the homepage.
Technical SEO | | DotCar0 -
Google website-links changing back and fourth
Thought I might ask you guys if you have ever seen anything similar, 'cause I sure haven't. 🙂 I have a client who stumbled across a problem with his website links. Google change them back and fourth. one day one of the links will be called "iPhone 4 accessories" and some weeks pass and then it changes to " 4 accessories". Weeks pass again and then the iphone is back. First I thought to myself that Google might have expanded the AdWords filter to include website-links.. But then I remembered that they were ordered by the EU courts to size that practice.. so that can't be it. Plus allot of his competition doesn't seem to have the same problem. I have checked everything, the links, title tags, page titles exc.. and I acn't realt find any reason why this should be happening to him and I must admit I have never seen anything similar. Any hints and pointers would be most welcome 🙂
Technical SEO | | ReneReinholdt0 -
Google Places and Name Change
Hello - I have a client who is a realtor and changed agencies. I edited their Google Places entry and the new name of their agency and address are showing - but so is their old listing. The agency they left is now trying to sue them for showing up in a number one position with Google Places under their agency name. Is this an indexing issue with Google? Their name shows up under both agency names. The corrected one shows most often, but the old one is still popping up on occasion. Thanks,
Technical SEO | | seoessentials1