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Hey all,
Again I have a newb question. I’m the oldest newbie I guess.I very recently bought out a website which is PR4 and has decent rankings, especially in danish and swedish. It was worth it since the price was good, but the website is UGLY. It also deals exclusively with poker despite the fact that it would be brandable for all casino games.
Anyway, I plan on rebuilding it but there’s one thing I’m not sure about. If I change the theme of the website (for example change the title, metas etc to add more than just poker), is it going to screw up the website’s serps? Because the google-indexed pages will no longer be there AND even the homepage would no longer be just about poker. I mean, I’d use redirection so that the person doesn’t get a 404, but is Google going to derank it and penalize it in serps?
Or the PR4 and PR3 subpages (for danish and swedish) will carry over and actually be beneficial?
I have to ask before undertaking the redesign since that’s one thing I’ve never done yet.
Anyone who’s done this before, your thoughts would be valuable.
PS: Ok here is what concerns me. Maybe it’ll make it clearer. Say that I have strong serps for the term “poker online” in danish. I have a bunch of inbound links for that keyphrase. But google sees that all of a sudden, the website is no longer about poker. Will that destroy the website’s strength in serps?
Anyone? Someone here has to have rebuilt a website.
You can change the visuals easily.
If you don’t want to hurt serps, you need to change all else gradually. Add content and keywords, wait to index, then slowly remove what you don’t need anymore.
Sllllooooowwwwlyyy or you can upset serps.
Exactly like Dominique says.
and try to keep the “theme” for wich you are ranking and inlinked for.
and why should you redirect??
and what do you mean with “Because the google-indexed pages will no longer be there”??
also change the title and metatags slooowwlyyyyyy
Thanks for the answers,
@elgoog 161070 wrote:
and why should you redirect??
and what do you mean with “Because the google-indexed pages will no longer be there”??
The website is written in basic HTML.. say a page is indexed in google as xxhttp://www.website.com/articles/anarticle.htmlxx, wouldn’t I need to redirect it if I want to change the website’s structure and use WordPress or just plain and simple rebuild it in php? Without a redirect, won’t I need to keep the exact same filetree?
If possible, it is far better to keep the same structure and same filetree.
And, if possible…when it’s article.html, keep it html…..Changing all the files to php can be done, but even with the best techniques you will loose some pr at the end.
I wouldn’t take the risk of loosing the good serps
and save me a lot of work and trouble
and simply change the pages slowly as how they are now.just my 2 cents
Elgoog said it.
I wouldn’t take the risk.
You will most certainly lose ranking of you lose the file structure.Changing your file structure will not destroy your search engine rankings or your google pagerank if you do it properly. If you 301 redirect your pages to the new location then you will normally see a slight drop in search rankings for a couple weeks but they will come back. I move pages and change my linking structure all the time and my rankings always come back.
Changing the content on your site is another story. If you go messing around with your title tag, h1 & h2 tags, your interlinking, etc, then do as Dominique says and move slowly. Make minor changes and wait to see how it affects your rankings. If you change the content up completely so its no longer related to the search term your ranking for then be prepared to completely lose that ranking unless you have a ridiculous amount of quality backlinks with those terms in the anchor text. An example of this would be if you search google for the term “click here” you will see adobe reader ranked number one. Its completely unrelated to the term and doesn’t even mention “click here” anywhere on the page but everyone links to it with some phrase such as “click here to download adobe reader.”
If you want to install wordpress as a cms for the site, go for it. Just make sure you 301 redirect the old links to the new ones and you will be fine. You also have the option to set your permalinks so that they match the old URL’s if your worried about it.
I wouldn’t change your content completely though. If you have good rankings for this site, don’t risk it. Just set up a new site and use that site as link juice for your new one.
Thanks for the answers, insightful.
I think I’ll redesign it and see what happens. I can hardly believe it would lose rankings for a super long amount of time. The website doesn’t generate massive amounts of money and currently makes most of it’s money from past players.Just, I guess since it ranks well for poker terms I’ll try to keep poker content proeminent? Would that work even if I add casino content to it? (yes I know there isn’t a lot of cross playing between casino and poker but the website’s theme is perfect for gamblers in general)
