Hi, If I wanted to completely redo a site (replacing the content and targetting different keywords), what do I need to know SEO-wise? I know I need to update the tags and try to keep the page urls the same, but what else do I need to know? And once I DO redesign the site, how do I let the search engines know about it (and how long does it usually take to re-index a site -- if such a thing is even possible...) Thanks!
If the site is already indexed by Google, it will learn of the new content as it crawls through the new content. Beware that you'll probably lose all the rankings for the content of the previous site since Google would be aware of the links pointing to the site about the previous content. Once your re-design is complete, you'll need to get links pointed to your site with the new keywords in place - that will help Google rank the site. Also, make sure you have a search engine sitemap - that way all the engines will know about all the pages of the site. Hope this helps.
Hi, That does help -- thanks! Is there a general rule of thumb of how long it takes Google to re-rank the site with the new keywords? Or does it all depend on how often/quickly it crawls the site and/or finds the new links with the new keywords? Thanks again for your help! Liz P.S. I tried checking out your Optimization site that you have in your siggy, but the prices and services pages aren't being displayed...
Hi Liz We get asked this question all the time. If you check out http://www.bluebonnetmediagroup.com , we are at the beginning of this process now. If you then go to http://www.catanich.com/bluebonnet.asp and review the reports on that page, you can see what you will go thru, what some of the areas that you will need to focus on and so on. The biggest question that we now have is what pages will be created for what keyword phrase. And then content will be written for this match up. Contact us if we can help
it is not advised to re do your site completely in terms of changing the page addresses. All your backlinks will be poining to these pages. By all means redesign the site and layout, but I'd leave the structure and page names alone.
Thanks for the update - I checked all versions (ie, ff, safari) and they are all there, but the DNS seems to be having issues - thanks again!
Catanich -- Thanks for those links, very interesting! I am definitely going to be looking into it a bit more and bookmarked your page in case I need any help in the future! LightlySalted - Thanks for your thoughts! I don't think the site has very many backlinks for anything besides the homepage, but you're right -- I should probably double-check to verify that before doing anything. But you're right -- maybe I should consider just expanding with new content instead of replacing the existing stuff. Ranksurge -- No problem!
if you do change the link file name, you can create a htacess file with 301 redirect. Redirect 301 /old_file.html http://domain.com/new_file.html