We have just updated our site and my biggest fair is losing our front page ranks for Google. I left the navigation on the side and the bottom but the design is really different. The new site is www.dwhs.net the old site is http://209.85.173.132/search?q=cache:rF-PUS4L1BwJ:www.dwhs.net/ I just updated it Last night and have fingers crossed. If you know of anything I can do to help the rank not get tanked please let me know! Thanks, Charley
If your file & navigation structure stays the same, you will probably experience minimal effects. If you do change any filenames, ensure that you setup a 301 redirect from the old url. I wasn't able to load the new version of your website. It seems to be timing out. This could be a bigger problem than the redesign itself. Regardless of what you do, you might still experience a drop in rankings. Fortunately this is usually temporary and rankings usually come back in time. Ok the website finally loaded. You did change some link anchor text which could have a negative effect. You removed all of the keyword rich navigation links that were in your old design. Your links with the text 'order now' or 'details' are a good example of what not to use for anchor text. In your case, this redesign will likely hurt your rankings in the long term. It seems like an seo was involved for the first design, but not the new one.
Ya I just finished the design. This weekend I'm going to do the SEO. I'm just trying to research first and you have been a huge help Thanks!
I agree to be wary of changing the URLs without a redirect. I did this for one of my sites and ended up with the new URLs in the supplemental cos of duplicate content. I ended up having to rewrite the pages (took me ages) - one page did eventually come back of its own accord once Google got the old page out of its index. The site is now doing well. Good luck.
Many people are going to great lengths to keep all the same URLs when changing an existing site. But like jj1 said, at the very least you absolutely have to redirect all the old ones. That's the biggest obstacle I've seen. Besides that, Google loves change (in the long run at least).