Landing Page - Home Page redesign SEO factor question - Serious concern.

[MenInKilts]

Hi Folks,

I'm considering making a big change to our website and really need some expert advise. Will we lose ranking if we do what I propose?

Our site www.meninkilts.com, needs to split users/clients by "Commercial" and "Residential" so we can message/market completely differently to each client.

We are considering doing this structure:

Landing Page

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|

Commercial Homepage Residential Homepage

Right now we rank well, for our keywords like "Window Cleaning cityname" but are worried that adding a landing page, and splitting our site to two homepages will effect seo (ie: a landing page would only have two buttons: one for commercial and one for residential).

What would be the best way to handle this. Looking forward to your insights!

Cheers Brent

[MenInKilts]

Joel - Fantastic replies. I Love SEOMOZ... some many passionate folks here. You have given me some real food for thought that I will take away and break the project down a bit with. Thanks again

[bronxpad]

Another idea would be to do some seo work for the commercial page and separate seo work for your residential page. If you're also thinking about doing a PPC campaign which most seos suggest to do both, then you can create an ad for each commercial and residential. That way you will direct your visitors to the page they desire tailored for them. Some of the best seos out there ( note I'm not one of them, I'm still learning myself ) have suggested that if a person sees your company in an ppc ad and on the same page for organic search, they are more likely to click on your organic search. This means more exposure and won't cost you much.

[bronxpad]

If you want to maintain your rankings and you have a good web designer that will make it look professional then yes. At the end of the day it's all about converting web visitors to actual consumers of your product. There is always a battle between seos and web designers. The trick is to merge both or find a person that is competent in both. I'll look at the site now and give you more feed back.

[MenInKilts]

Thanks Joel!

Almost all links are for main homepage www.meninkilts.com

So your idea for leaving the homepage as is and creating a giant buttons for Commercial and one for Residential is probably better.

[bronxpad]

It depends how your site is generating it's rankings. Is it a competitive keyword or a non competitive keyword? Do you have high keyword density on the main page now? How many links do you have pointing to your main page? If you do split up your pages you might lose your rankings. Also you will be changing the destination of the pages so you might be starting from scratch. You might consider keeping the main page and adding the second page with a link prominantly on your main page. This way you keep your rankings. You need to be careful with how you move forward. How long have you been ranking for this keyword? You also need to make a business decision on whether or not making the change is better for your business than keeping the rankings. If you determine that your site will be much better for the user and generate better conversions from visitors to buyers then it might make sense to take the ranking hit start a Plc campaign and work with a white hat seo pro to regain rankings.