Changing our homepage - what to bear in mind?
-
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
-
Thanks Alice, great advice
Dan
-
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.
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
-
What should I name my Wordpress homepage?
I work almost exclusively in wordpress now. And I always hesitate when it comes to naming a site's homepage. I have to give it a name - right? I usually pick the business name or /home. And then that is identifies as the site's static homepage in the Wordpress settings and it works just fine. But I've started to get warning that it is an issue because it creates redirects. For example, I just ran the Ryte service analysis on a website and it warned me about "Non-indexable pages with high relevance" and it's basically my homepage that has 29 incoming links that "passes all pagerank to https://ourdomain/home But what am I supposed to call my homepage if not "Home"? It's not like the old days where anyone has to type it in. The root domain loads the homepage just as it should. Can anybody advise me regarding best practices for what to name a Wordpress homepage for good SEO? With thanks in advance for your help.
Technical SEO | | Dandelion0 -
Homepage has dropped out of search results
As of 9/12, my homepage has dropped out of the SERPs. If you google my business name (Sumy Designs) it shows other pages in my site, my Facebook page, etc, but not the homepage. My sitelinks are gone too. It IS still indexed, which you can see if you do site:sumydesigns.com I had been ranking for about 15 keywords that have all been lost since my homepage has disappeared. Here's what I know: There are no manual actions. The homepage is still being indexed, it's just not showing up for any keywords, even my brand Nothing has changed in terms of content, I have been a near daily blogger for several years There's no indication of a problem in search console The drop only appears to be affecting desktop searches, mobile search it still shows up which seems pretty weird. I would love any ideas as to what could be causing this disappearance.
Technical SEO | | sumydesigns0 -
Duplicate homepage content across multiple websites
Hi, I work for a company that runs 30+ membership based websites on separate domains and across multiple markets. The homepage for each site contains a section of content that highlights the site benefits and features. While each website serves a different market/niche, this section of content is essentially the same as each website offers the same benefits and features. What is the best way to avoid duplicate content issues while still being able to show the same section of content across 30+ sites? This particular section of content isn't valuable from an SEO perspective, but the rest of the content on that page is. Any ideas or suggestions would be much appreciated. Thanks
Technical SEO | | CupidTeam0 -
Changing E Commerce platforms
Hey All, Im Olga and new to search engine optimization and web development. I recently changed from O S Commerce to Go daddy Quick shopping Cart. Before on my old site I had a lot of images show up on google searches on the first page in the image section that have recently vanished due to the change. I think that is where the majority of my sales were coming from as I did not really rank for any keyword searches. My old web designer did everything for my old site and told me a year ago he was to busy to help me out anymore and I did not know how to work OS Commerce hence the change to quick shopping cart. Does anyone know how to get images back into google images, or any other beginner strategies to help me rank in google. I have used all of the tools on this program and pretty much got everything figured out only I think the industry I am in is VERY competitive. Would love any advice or help. Thanks, Olga Girls Gone Biker
Technical SEO | | girlsgonebiker0 -
301 category page to Homepage to increase authority
Hello all, Hope everyone is well and are enjoying the summer. I am currently working with a site: www.corporatehealth.co.uk and have been trying to rank on the first page for the keyword occupational health. currently we are ranking on the second page: http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=occupational+health&pws=0&gl=uk#q=occupational+health&hl=en&pws=0&gl=uk&prmd=ivnsb&ei=38dUTuHCDdGKhQetqZn5BQ&start=10&sa=N&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=80a9548917d021a&biw=1920&bih=878 I understand I need to get more links pointing to the site and page itself. My idea was to do a 301 redirect from the occupational health page to the homepage and add occupational health content to the homepage as ultimately they are an occupational health service supplier. Was hoping to get anyones thoughts on the issue. Thanks in advance Shehzad
Technical SEO | | Gareth_Cartman0 -
Will changing page extensions from .html to .php require a redirect?
Hi. We are launching a new website and our .html page extensions will be replaced with a .php page extension. Example: www.theideapeople.com/web_design.html (current url) www.theideapeople.com/web_design.php (new url) Will this require any special treatment to maintain the page SEO ranking? Does it make a difference if you use a .html or .php? Thank you for your help and insight! Jay
Technical SEO | | theideapeople0 -
How to proceed with domain switch AND url change
Hi, in a few weeks we'll do a major change on our website. This involves over 1.5 million pages indexed in Google driving substantial amount of our traffic. Basically we have 2 types of changes: subdomain switches to domain:
Technical SEO | | TruvoDirectories
ex. product.company.com will become www.product.com
for this we know how to manage DNS and Apache rules different url patterns, basically replacing ugly urls by pretty urls
for this we have advanced 301-mapping rules set up Here is the question - what is best way to proceed with these 2 changes in order to preserve rankings and organic traffic: Do both changes simultaneously? First do url changes, than the domain switch Can you please share your thoughts?0 -
Google Places and Name Change
Hello - I have a client who is a realtor and changed agencies. I edited their Google Places entry and the new name of their agency and address are showing - but so is their old listing. The agency they left is now trying to sue them for showing up in a number one position with Google Places under their agency name. Is this an indexing issue with Google? Their name shows up under both agency names. The corrected one shows most often, but the old one is still popping up on occasion. Thanks,
Technical SEO | | seoessentials1