My old website is having lots of content and is about 1000 pages now. But now my new website has only 500 pages with crisp content and well designed. I'm bit scared to replace the old website as it is ranking very well and and giving me lots of traffic. What are the main checkpoints to be aware of to replace the website safely. Only one thing I've done yet i.e planed the URL redirection structure.
If you are planning to replace the old site with new site permanently then implement 301 redirection.
I don't understand why you would replace ? Why not just update the old pages with the new design? G and MSN both seem to really like updated content and seem to reward with a boost in rankings. When I make changes on alot of pages I see a big jump in my numbers. Just wondering?
No Actually My old site look weared coz having lots of unwanted text and on top of that the design is not happening. I just wanted to know what are other things to take care apart from 301 redirection...as i've already planed for my redirection. Also I need to tell you that all my URL are also changing as i'm following a diffrent sitemap structure.
I would recommend you not to replace your old site with a new one. It is better to launch a new website as an alternative.
Hi 3DProf4online thanks for your recommendation, but I'm seeking for the steps to be taken while replacing the website with the new one. Well if its done correctly, it does not effect much. I've seen some examples like 123greetings.com ew months back they have replaced the old site with the new Bita version and its popularity and traffic is still the same.
Of course, it is up to you and you will decide how to act better. But if I were you I would prefer not to take a risk.
Even with proper 301 redirects you can expect a minimum of 3 months of little to no traffic. Further, there is strong evidence that age of domain is an important factor in ranking on all the SE's. This is not a path to be taken lightly. If at all possible, preserve the original domain via a redesign. If there are overrriding concerns that force you to make a switch, be prepared for a big hit on traffic.
In Dec we redesigned a PR7 site w/ 4000+ URLs. EVERY URL on the site changed. So EVERYTHING required a 301 redirect. Big, scary effort... but a total success. Perhaps this previous post of mine on things I considered when redesigning our site will help you plan for the switch, although I would suggest keeping your same OLD domain and simply switching to using your new design and new pages. The key to being successful is all in the planning. You really can't do to much planning. As far as your rankings I would plan on 1-3 months of lower than usual traffic before your traffic returns to normal. You have to wait on the engines to recrawls ALL of your inbound links from other sites. How long it takes to bounce back depends on how often the sites that link to you are crawled. If most of them are crawled daily or every few days then your site should bounce back within a month or so. If most sites linking to you are crawled monthly or even more infrequently then plan on 2-3 months to bounce back. Again, I would try to keep your old domain if at all possible to avoid getting sandboxed and to retain any benefit you may currently be getting because of your domain age.