Site Ranks on Page 1 - Would launching new site hurt that
-
Hello,
I currently have a website ranking in the top 7 for my main keyword.
The website was built in 2004 and is definitely outdated, yet still ranks very high and brings in business.
If i launched a new site on this domain, what would happen to my rankings?
Would they drop? would they rise?
If i don't launch the new site, will this site eventually drop due to being old and outdated?
Any advice would be helpful...
-
Excellent article covering everything that should be taken into consideration when launching a replacement website / website migration. Definitely recommended for the member asking the original question to work through each points contained within the article.
Great resource Keri.
-
We had a great guide posted about this in February that you might want to look at. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/web-site-migration-guide-tips-for-seos
-
I have actually done this a number of times with some of my businesses. Sometimes along with launching a new site I even changed servers - so it was a bit more drastic. The good news is that while I did sometimes see a slight drop for 2-3 days in the site traffic it came back quickly, and as long as the new design is esthetically more pleasing to your users, you will make up for the lost profit for those few days shortly.
Of course, as everybody says the key is doing the 301 correctly and making sure the main site structure is the same. In almost all the cases I did this, I kept most the file names the same. Also, try to keep the keyword density you have on your current site the same in the text on the new site (at least on the most important pages). This should keep the effect of the change to a minimum.Good luck.
-
There is literally tons of factors to consider. Primarily, how much will the website be changing, one would only presume considerate research has been carried out and the changes are for the better (both from a usability and optimisation perspective).
Some questions to ask...
- Will the URL's / URL structure change at all or will all URL paths be kept intact?
- Will the actual content on each page be changing at all?
- Is any content being removed or added?
These three questions will pose the biggest ranking changes...
All three should be addressed for the better which should then see a positive climb in rankings (if anything at all). If any URL's are changed, as Erik points out, 301 redirecting these is essential, however this won't pass 100% weight through to the new destinations so it's possible the authority leakage on these alone could cause a drop in rankings (temporary of otherwise).
Hope that helps for now.
-
You should be alright with a new site, just make sure you don't lose your architecture. If you are going to have a completely new architecture, then you need to make sure you are 301 redirecting everything correctly. You may see a little dip, but if done well, you will be fine.
-
You can hold youre positions and maybe rise, but work with 301 redirects on old pages!
Every old page need to be redirected.
Read al the information here: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=83105
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Which one is better for ranking?
Hello community My question is most of the domains on the first page has non-WWW URL thereby If I consider High domain authoritative sites including https://moz.com/ and https://ahrefs.com/ : the site URL is without www on the contrary, when I take Google it has https://www.google.co.in/ It just confused me, could anyone solve my issue that which one is better for SEO?
Web Design | | Tabassum0 -
Is it Bad to Break Up A Site into Multiple Sites?
I have a big cluttered website with endless pages. It's a non-profit that has content for patients, researchers, therapists, etc.. Would it be a bad idea to turn this cluttered site into 3 or more completely different sites, each focused on their specific demographic? Or should I just figure out how to organize the one site better? Thanks for your help!!!
Web Design | | bosleypalmer0 -
Can the website pages have the site name like Title of the page | Sitename.com
Hi, Can the website pages have the site name like Title of the page | Sitename.com I have a site with 50K pages and all pages have | Sitename.com mentioned would that be a good practice or bad? Thanks Martin
Web Design | | mtthompsons0 -
Will keyword optimization for a landing page impact SEO for subsequent pages?
For example, if I optimize keyword “pleurx” really well on our landing page, I'd like to know if subsequent
Web Design | | Todd_Kendrick
pages linking back to that landing page will rank higher than before for “pleurx”
even if “pleurx” wasn't optimized on the subsequent pages. Thanks! -Andrew0 -
We believe we accomplished an SEO Parallax site with a nice balance. Can the MOZ community critique this site from an SEO perspective?
Our goal was to accomplish a site that has parallax scrolling and great onsite optimization. We noticed that most Awwward winning sites www.awwwards.com have great parallax scrolling but no SEO. Can the MOZ community critique this site from an SEO perspective? (Note this site was optimized for Chrome or Firefox. If you are using IE, you will be redirected to the old site.) www.posicionamientowebenbuscadores.com Note the site is in BETA still. It has the following technologies CSS3 HTML5 REsponsive Wordpress Parallax Scrolling Onsite Optimization (SEO) No mobile (ran out of funds...)
Web Design | | Carla_Dawson0 -
For a web design firm, should i make a google plus local page or company page?
I have a web design firm located in India, At this moment we are focusing on local clients as the current competition in local market is very low. But in few months we will shift our focus to outsourcing. So I wanted to know if we should make a google plus local page and connect it with my google places account and website or should I make a google plus business page and connect it to website? Our major focus is on seo. Thanks
Web Design | | hard0 -
New URL Strucutre
Hello all! I'm new to SeoMoz and would like to introduce myself and say thanks for all of the great content. This is definitely the premium website I have been looking for. My question is regarding a new URL structure that will be implemented with our website redesign. We are looking to make our URL's more user and SEO friendly. We will be using 301 redirects to reroute our existing structure when the site goes live. Background
Web Design | | kauffmantire
I work in a company that retails automotive tires. I would consider class (performance, off-road, highway, etc.) to be the most important category, but based on our analytics we receive much more traffic from brand terms. This is most likely because our customers are not educated on specific tire classes and generally do head term searches or search by brand / product name. Ultimately the will have to buy from a certain class based on driving habits. Link and URL Structure
(Parameters) The model page includes links to individual tire size specific pages. We are using the model page as our primary SEO page because the only difference from the 5 - 60 tire size specific pages per model will be the tire size itself. This means that all of the remaining content will be duplicated multiple times over. All links to the tire size specific page from the model page will have a rel="nofollow" attribute attached to it. All tire size specific pages will have a rel="canonical" tag pointing back to the model page Out of the following structures, which would you consider to be the best format: 1. http://www.company.com/category/brand/model
or
2. http://www.company.com/brand/category/model
or
3. http://www.company.com/tires/category/model We will append the specific tire-size to the URL on the item specific pages. Any other options or strategies will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance for your help!0 -
Two home pages?
One of my campaigns shows duplicate page content for domain xxx and xxx/index. There is only one index (home) page, so why does it report on two?
Web Design | | Beemer0