Old Website Sitting Out There Doing Nothing - Will Changing it Hurt it?

[bigcat1967]

I have a website that has been sitting out there for around three years, doing nothing. I thought I would take advantage of the age and put brand new content on it, change the title tags and the banner - will that hurt the age of the website? I don't want to change the entire structure of the site - just the banner.

I guess what I'm trying to find out if that it would be better to start new content and a little design change rather than building a brand new site where it will take a while to move up since it is young. Am I correct in thinking this?

[dburk]

Hi bigcat1967,

It is not the age of your website that matters.

Search engines do not index websites they index individual web pages. When you substantially change the content of a page, search engines will see this as a new page and you lose the trust earned by the age of your previous content. If the current page has earned rankings, that are meaningful to your website traffic, then it would be prudent to not change the content too much.