Hi, Our site is Live from 2005 and enjoys decent traffic and got PR4. It got Number 1 rank on many keywords but site design and features are bit outdated we want to give it a fresh look along with many added features, for which we need to change it from .Net to PHP.. Now the biggest question is if we do so will there be any drop in the organic traffic and Keywords ranking?? Is it a good decision to go ahead with the new layout or should we stick with the old one? Your response will be highly appreciated. Thanks
Search engine indexing your pages based on its URLs.If the redesign from .net to PHP changing your URLs, it will definitely affecting your traffic from search engines.But I know wordpress can imitate exact url using custom permalink setting.Goodluck.
I think it's a good idea to change the site's layout and design, particularly if you know that doing so will help improve user experience. You can apply a redirect from the .NET URLs to PHP so you do not lose any traffic or ranking. Hope that helps. Have a good day!
Ohk.. Thanks for your all kind advice. Will go for it soon. Still if anyone want to add more input then it will be highly appreciated.
You definitely need to plan it over before implementing the transition to php. As you may know, changing the site would affect the traffic as well as the ranking of your site. You just have to redirect it first and make sure that everything is prepared when you begin the transition. Like the other replies mentioned above, redirecting the site to your new page could help in retaining the traffic and the page rank of the site. You can use a 301 Redirect to permanently redirect all pages on your old site to your new site. Through the 301 status code, it informs search engines and users that the page has permanently moved to a new location. You can also use a tool like the Fetch as Google to ask Google to crawl your new site.