google ranking effects when moving a site?

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I am completely re-vamping a website for the company I work for (we are a small town local company, just doing a basic website with a little info about us, contact form, hours of operation etc. nothing fancy). My question is, we already own the domain name and it is the #3 on pg. 1 google for our targeted keywords and I am wondering how this ranking will be affected once the site is re-vamped? We hired someone for the original website so I have no idea how he has it set up to rank so well as there is not much content on the site at all.

It is currently hosted on godaddy and I will be moving it to a new hosting company and just transferring the domain, changing design, and adding a little (not much) content. How are the backlinks for the site going to be affected, are they attached to the actual domain name or attached to where the site is being hosted?:confused: How long will it take for the rank on google to change? I'm still a newbie and a little confused on all the behind the scenes stuff .

Thanks in advance.
#website design #effects #google #moving #ranking #site
  • Backlinks point to the domain name itself, not the server. So no worries there

    If you are changing the page structure, you may want to set up 301 redirects when you move the website. By changing the structure I mean:

    clientdomain.com/aboutus.html gets changed by you to clientdomain.com/about-us/

    If you do change the names of the pages and structure, you can use a 301 redirect to help avoid any visitors receiving a 404 error if clicking through to the site from an external link. In addition, it will pass on the benefit from the backlink.

    You might find the website moves around a little in the rankings after you update the content and layout. This is pretty normal, are you performing any sort of marketing on the site after you've finished the re-design?

    One final point, try to make sure that the downtime for the site is as slow as possible. Get the new site online and ready before changing the DNS details for the domain. I've seen so many designers change the DNS straight away and then spend a week building a new site and fixing any bugs. You don't want Google to go and index a half-finished version of the new site - it looks tacky!
    • [1] reply
    • Thanks for the response MattyD

      If you don't mind, do you know any good resources that could show me how to set up a 301 redirect?

      We plan on marketing our new website some with a local TV station after the re-design so I'm trying to make sure I get everything right

      I am almost finished with the redesign and definitely don't plan on transferring the domain until it's done. It will have to get approval from the higher ups before it can go live anyway.

      Thank you for your help!
  • I guess you should hire someone with experience and pay some small amount to him for this task.
    Otherwise you have to pay much more for SEO again.
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    google ranking effects when moving a site?

    I am completely re-vamping a website for the company I work for (we are a small town local company, just doing a basic website with a little info about us, contact form, hours of operation etc. nothing fancy). My question is, we already own the domain name and it is the #3 on pg. 1 google for our targeted keywords and I am wondering how this ranking will be affected once the site is re-vamped? We hired someone for the original website so I have no idea how he has it set up to rank so well as there is not much content on the site at all. It is currently hosted on godaddy and I will be moving it to a new hosting company and just transferring the domain, changing design, and adding a little (not much) content. How are the backlinks for the site going to be affected, are they attached to the actual domain name or attached to where the site is being hosted?:confused: How long will it take for the rank on google to change? I'm still a newbie and a little confused on all the behind the scenes stuff .