SEO - Site Update

Hello,

If i update my whole website with a new layout and slight changes on the content and links it "destroys" the SEO history or something like that?

Best regards

 

It can affect your ranking. It depends on the extremity of the site structure change you make. If you can, keep all page file names the same and maintain all the internal link structure, and then you will minimise disruption.

 

Apart from tests for mobile compatibility, search engines could give a flying purple fish about your bloody layout. This is because SEARCH ENGINES DON'T HAVE EYEBALLS. All they REALLY care about when it comes to on-page is your content, how it's marked up. Content and semantics; that's pretty much the be-all end-all unless you've played some goofy black-hat SEO nonsense designed to get you slapped down by search like content cloaking.

MOST websites have pages of content that changes, that's called keeping your content FRESH. This isn't something search would intentionally penalize you for, and whilst a degree of static "user orientation" content is not a bad idea on your home page, assuming the TOPICS of the site are fairly consistent I wouldn't worry about it too much.

Unless your sleazeball dirtbagging content nobody gives a flying **** about in hopes of advertising revenue -- the biggest sleazy scam people delude themselves into thinking is legitimate.

It is very easy to delude yourself into thinking optimizing for the search engine is massively important, when in practice it is just a small part of sitebuilding. ALWAYS keep in mind the biggest and most important advice we were EVER given about search:

"Write for the user, not the search engine" -- Matt Cutts.

If new and fresh content is going to be more useful to your visitors, DO IT. Doing so means a higher likelihood of organic backlinks, natural visits from non-search sources, and those in turn can result in better search ratings AND more useful traffic than worrying about search alone can provide...

... and is why the "search at the cost of everything else" asshat rubbish promoted by most so called "SEO Experts" and the scam artists who have turned SEO into a cottage industry unto itself will do far more harm than good to the health of a website.

 

Thanks for your answer. Gave me some "lights" about the topic, i sure am thinking way too much about the search engine instead of the users... Glad to know that I am being an idiot.

Best regards and thanks again!

 

Hello Gigante, Well, if you change your existing URL, then you (should) have to submit old URL to the webmaster as soon as you can. Otherwise, it will affect your website. Thanks.

 

Hello gigante,
I actually recently dealt with this myself. I redesigned a client site with exactly the same text, but with a different layout. To my surprise, the website lowered in search engines dramatically for about two weeks. I did some extra SEO on them and they came back up quickly, but the redesign did affect the rankings for a while.