I have a website that has alright msn rankings and page 2 rankings on yahoo...unfortunately nowhere on google. I am considering doing a major site redesign to improve conversions and hopefully stand a better chance of getting improved rankings. I know with Google you often temporarily lose rankings after a redesign, but what about MSN & Yahoo? Do you retain rankings on MSN & Yahoo after a site redesign? Assume the rankings are mostly from banklinks and not just onpage optimization. The reason I wonder is that I have recently started building more backlinks for that site and I want to do a lot more link building. I'm just not sure if it would be better to hold off on the major link building until after I do the redesign. I figure by doing the link building later it would be easier to retain rankings and improve upon them.
i would suggest you to hold on to your link building campaign till your site redesign is done. you are right about google where you typically drop in ranking after a major face lift on your site. you will make better use of the backlinks at that time which will help you get back on track lot sooner. asuming your site will be more SEO optimized once redesigned, building more backlinks at that time will invite googlebot on a more regular basis and google will see not only change in site content but also increased amount of overall activity which wil be positive for you. in terms of what kind of impact it will have on Yahoo and MSN, i havn't seen instant drop in ranking after changing any site structure/layout/content so you are probably more safe with them holding your ranking after redesign
If you redesign your site then that will affect your Google ranking but after a drop you should begin to rise up again. If Google crawl your site on a regular basis anyway then I don't think its worth holding back your link building, I'd just go ahead and do it now as you'll get the same result in the end.
Hey sultan...thanks for the advice. That's basically what I was thinking myself, but I wanted confirmation. I really want to start building a lot of links now, but I know they would be better if done after the redesign. Know any cheap designers?
R2-D2 you're probably right about it being the same result but quicker results if I build links now. I know Google has some kind of patent about not counting previous activity such as links after major changes on a site. That patent only seems in effect temporarily. I just don't want any links going to waste (on Google anyway).
i had not so pleasant experience with cheap designers. i outsourced few of my own projects to few offshore cheap design companies/individuals and they took forever to complete my work. they promise a lot but deliver none. i cannot afford to wait 3 months on a 1-2 week project so i gave up on cheap designers. my advice is try freelance boards like get a freelancer and post your job there. dont select from the cheapest quote but go with someone with lots of good reviews. you may not nessessarily pay more as lot of competition there as well but you will get quality work in given timeframe.
I feel since it takes alot of time to build alot of natural links that you should be building the links before the re design. I see no reason to wait, I have built alot of links for a site then redesigned and actually seen an increase in the serps. Of course the reason for the re design was to better my on site seo.