Will Site Redesign Affect SEO?

9 replies
  • SEO
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Thank you in advance for input.

Some information on my situation...


I have a 6 year old website that ranks well for some decent long tail keywords. The site is a simple 5 page site. Landing page with CTA to an AdSense page, Privacy Policy Page and 2 Articles. No back end, no php just simple HTML and text. No SEO work has been done in 3 years, nor updates, anything...nada

The site works fairly well. 12.6% of visits result in a click on an AdSense ad and the site is clearing $500 per month profit...100% hands off.

And my dilemma...

Should I redesign the site? I was considering moving the entire site to WordPress, installing some SEO plugins and ramping up the content with articles, images and videos.

Will a drastic change like this have a negative impact on my SEO rankings? Will I be building from scratch? Would hate to jeopardize this easy money site that has been producing for so many years.

TL;DR

If I completely redesign my site from the ground up will I lose rankings?

Any input/past experience is greatly appreciated.

Nick
#affect #redesign #seo #site
  • Profile picture of the author arojilla
    I don't know. Certainly risky. If you fear having to start from scratch, then maybe you could start the new site as an independent one. This way you risk nothing regarding the current one.

    The new site could be a slight variation (avoiding duplication as much as possible) and over time you would be able to see which one works better. Maybe one day you don't need the old site any more because the new one is doing better, or you can keep both, or maybe the new one just doesn't work...

    As I said, I don't know. But as they said, if ain't broke don't fix it?
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  • Profile picture of the author Cubomedusae
    I recommend switching to Wordpress. Just make sure that the content stays the same and that the new design does not slow down your website.
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  • Profile picture of the author zaccks
    If i were you i will not redesign anything since you're not selling anything or offer any services on the site. i've seen many complains here on WF and DF on website traffic falling due to website redesign or some minor changes on the site.

    My advice, let it keep rolling like that.
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    • Profile picture of the author DABK
      That would depend what you're redesigning.

      Changing the color or font size won't. Changing the url, titles, and a gazzillion other things will.
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    • Profile picture of the author jazzd1
      I wouldn't risk it.. Let it keep producing as long as it can..Just build another one in the same niche and as a goal, work on trying to match or exceed the income of your current site..
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  • Profile picture of the author Mehwish84
    it will not if you implement 301 carefully. with change in design the most common error comes is 404 for search engines for that you need to apply 301 from your .htaccess file. if you are using WordPress than there is a plugin for it too. if you manage to counter 404 than this will actually help boost your site.
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  • Profile picture of the author sudhanshup
    If you are planning to re-design the website, it will effect on the existing ranking but you can avoid that by taking few steps.
    Benchmark Your Current Metrics

    Number of visits/visitors/unique visitors (monthly average)
    Bounce rate (monthly average)
    Time on site (monthly average)
    Top-performing keywords (in terms of rank, traffic, and lead generation)
    Number of inbound linking domains
    Total number of new leads/form submissions (per month)
    Total amount of sales generated (per month)
    Total number of pages indexed
    Total number of pages that receive traffic


    Set Your Redesign Goals

    Now take the seo steps. Crawl Your Site and know what are the things which is helping you.

    You should have these headings:

    Address
    Content
    Status code
    Status
    Title 1
    Title 1 length
    Title 1 pixel width
    Meta description 1
    Meta description 1 length
    Meta description 1 pixel width
    Meta keyword 1
    Meta keywords 1 length
    H1-1
    H1-1 length
    H2-1
    H2-1 length
    Meta robots 1
    Meta refresh 1
    Canonical link element 1
    Size
    Word count
    Level
    Inlinks
    Outlinks
    External outlinks
    Hash
    Some of these have the number "1" next to them, signifying that there is only one. If some of yours have number 2 next to them, then you have several of these. The elements you shouldn’t have a number "2" on are as follows:

    Title
    Meta description
    Meta keywords
    Canonical tag
    H1 (I’ll leave that open to debate)

    Now setup the development area and develop the new website, but make sure that you are using noindex for development website.

    Crawl the development website and compare the matrix with old website.
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  • Profile picture of the author Richard johnson
    One thing every website owner needs to understand, is that anytime there are major (or minor) changes to a website, there will be some traffic decline because Google has to re-evaluate the website with the new design and content in place.
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