Changing our homepage - what to bear in mind?

[danfk]

We're going to refresh our homepage by putting more content on it and a slightly different design.

Given that it's our highest authority page, I don't want to screw it up.

We're going to keep the titles / meta / copy the same during the transition, is there anything else I should bear in mind to avoid it plummeting down the rankings?

I ask as we have a 2nd smaller site and when I changed 1 word in the title of the homepage it lost 40 places on half its keywords. Lesson learned...

Thanks in advance for any tips

Dan

[danfk]

Thanks Alice, great advice

Dan

[gcdtechnologies]

Hi Dan, wow 40 places for one word - that's harsh! I've seen a fairly common pattern on redesigns/content overhauls - rankings tend to drop immediately after major changes, but gradually rise back up (hopefully to higher than before) over the next few weeks.

Unfortunately it's very hard to predict how rankings will be affected, and given it's your home page that probably seems pretty scary. I would say:

• Change one element at a time and monitor the results. This will allow you to test exactly what's working and what;s not. So possibly add the content first, wait for any fluctuations to level out, then make the redesign.
• Run some user/AB testing to monitor the impact on visitors. This can give you some excellent data to give direction to the refresh. Even slightly different designs can have a huge impact on CTR and visitor behaviour.

Good luck with the refresh.