Will a redesign affect SERPS?

As the thread title asks, will a site redesign adversely affect SERPs.

Any advice appreciated.

Thanks.

Bagless

 

My personal experience, no, changing the design of a site should not affect its ranking in the results pages (SERPS). I have a wordpress blog that I change the theme on a regular basis, and it holds steady on page 1 of google for its targeted keywords(Its ranked #5 out of 7,980,000 results).

But - one time I changed the theme, and the new theme did not have the meta description. Within a day or two the site started dropping in the SERPs. When I added the description, the site recovered its ranking. That was 6 - 8 months ago. After that time I have changed the theme at least twice and with no ill side effects. But I also check to make sure little things, like my google analytics and meta tags are in place.

One thing to consider is the sites age. Google might be a little more picky with new sites.

 

If you don't change the content, it won't modify your SERP

 

The site is about 18 months old and ranks well on a number of keywords.

It is a fairly basic html site, not Wordpress. Titles and content would be the same/similar but it needs some work on the layout/images to make it look more appealing.

EDIT - Crossed posts. Thanks for the quick replies by the way, there isn't a thanks button on here though!

 

If you modify the site architecture (ie-the link navigation) it could definitely make a huge difference in your ranking (could be better, or it could be worse). As long as you make changes only to the images and not the functionality, you should be ok.

Regards,

Neil

 

If you change the URL structure you'll loose any link juice from incoming links to the old URLs. This can make you drop a lot in the SERPs. You need to keep the URLs the same or redirect the old URLs to the new URLs if you change them.

Another danger you face is if you change the page titles, page description, or the content of the pages. If you do that your SERPs will change...maybe for the better...maybe for the worse.

 

Agreed. When you change the design without changing the contents, there should not be any change in the serp. But when you change the title, meta description we are not sure how the change has been accepted by the big G and in turn your SERP. But it is always advised to change for the better

 

The change your site to new design will not effect your ranking if

- You did not change the contents
- You keep old title, meta tags.
- You keep old url structure and site hierarchy
- You keep old elements (h1, h2, h3, strong)
- You did not change internal linking structure, or change at least at possible.

 

Before going to redesign your website.............you need to keep in mind some important points. These are as follows:
1. don't change page name and directory structures.
2. don't change content optimization(Header tags, anchor tags and meta tags of the pages).
3. before update your website, try to check it offline and make sure that site have all same meta tags and other seo points which were available in old website..
4. Hosting server..........check load balancing and server response to your web page (if your are taking new hosting).
5. webmaster account and xml site map plays an important role in site crawling that's why it should be properly place at your website...........

 

This is no effect on changing the theme, unless you miss out some of the SERP element.

 

If you change the fundamental structure of the HTML then YES.

 

If you go tableless and change the placement of the content then yes it will affect serps. Search engines love none tabled websites, that place the content close to the front of the output of the pages. You need to add ignore tag's to all the parts of the website that are for user online functions, user login, add comment, etc type of stuff.

 

No, if you only change the design but never change on the content will not affect your SERP. SERP will be affected if you change on the content

 

I recently re-designed one of my sites.

Kept the same urls, headings, meta tags and content.

Things I did change include new link structure, went from strict to transitional as I started using tables, 3 column to 2 column and some other design changes.

Experienced a big drop in serps for a couple of weeks and now pretty much back were it was.

That is as much as I would ever change - any more than that and I would rather create a new site.

 

I personally have changed the website design and titles, descriptions few times. I think it is quite possible that your site's ranking will remain the same after you redesign but, there is also a possibility of losing your ranking. I am saying this because of my personal experience with such thing. I lost all my ranking when I updated one of my blogs: I changed the theme plus the internal link structure.

 

It changed my SEPRS, my home pages stopped even showing in google for a week.

 

Well, my personal experience told me that redesigning will affect many things, including the keywords density etc.
And hence, that will affect the SERP a bit.

 

This is true just watch out for breadcrums changing.

 

..and have they gone back to normal now?

 

Just make sure your titles and headings stay and remain the same as before...