Hi, I have a site that ranks quite well for many keywords but it was one of the first sites I created and isn't too well designed. It's not standards compliant and has messy tables. Could redesigning my site potentially hurt my rankings? Vice versa? No difference? What's your thoughts and experience with site redesign and SEO? Thanks for any feedback.
I actually just finished redesigning our website two days ago so it is way too early to say if it is gonna effect the ranking or not. Well so far as I read on various blogs redesign can only help the site. It would probably ease on the eyes on your visitors if it looks more web 2.0. If the content and metatags are fine on the website I wouldn't change much. I would just add an RSS feed if you don't have one for fresh content. P.S: Don't redesign your site in Flash, it will affect your ranking downward. What is your site main focus anyway?
You surely can redesign the site without affecting your rankings. Try keeping the file names the same. If you have to change the file names, you need to do a 301 permanent redirect to let search engines know about these changes. Good luck!
Well in your case (since the code was messy) if you redesign and recode your layout into a standard valid HTML/XHTML (whatever language you chose) and keep the same title/description/h1 tags it would just slightly improve your rankings (maybe). While if you are missing of h1 tags, image alt tags and other small things you can simply just improve the rankings. A coincidence tho, its been 4 days already that I started redesigning one of my sites (just because my intention is to compete with a really competitive keyword on the niche) but i haven't moved on much actually, seems like no time remains for me, all the time is dedicated to clients.
I would redesign and optimize titles, urls, and h1's. The actual code really isnt going to have that much of an impact, but the other parts will.
Well, if the old version of your website, I don't see how improving on every aspect would hurt your rankings? Just make sure all of the content is the same, and keywords and stuff. Try and improve everything and it shouldn't hurt your rankings. Poor.
The below urls could be of some help to you: http://seoblog.intrapromote.com/2005/11/an_seo_checklis.html http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3422791
Thanks for the replies everyone. The url's, titles, meta, will all stay the same. Thanks for the links also seoperson, I will take a look through them. I'm going to optimize better by allowing search engines to read the content first and including H1 tags first also so it would be nice to see any improvement. I will update everyone on my progress if i notice any significant results. Thanks again.
i think design of the web site does not effect the serp but checking xhtml of your site may be a good idea