How might I lose PR by doing a site redesign?

[franchise]

Hey guys, I'm not sure if there are any hard/fast rules on SEO and site redesigning that I should consider before going full speed on a re-facing of my website.

The site ranks very high for its keywords and I don't want to lose the traffic, but I must freshen up the site. Mostly it will be cosmetic....but there will be some new functionality and some moving things around. In other words there may be items/text on certain pages that will be moved to other pages etc. I'm not sure how that will play out with the search engines or if I shouldn't worry about it.

Any thoughts, comments, tips would really help.

Thanks a bunch,
N Fran

 

[shockie]

first off, you will not lose pr from a redesign unless you change the names of the urls, since pr is based on links. how high you rank for certain keywords and the traffic obtained from that falls in the realm of search engine optimization - not pr.

so to deal with the serp and traffic issue:

1) make sure you have a copy of your current website
2) change one group of things and give it some time to filter through to the search engines. if you notice a decrease in your position - change it back.
3) keeping things like keyword density and tags the same as the old copy will help to maintain your current ranking.

 

[John Doe]

Hey guys, I'm not sure if there are any hard/fast rules on SEO and site redesigning that I should consider before going full speed on a re-facing of my website.

The site ranks very high for its keywords and I don't want to lose the traffic, but I must freshen up the site. Mostly it will be cosmetic....but there will be some new functionality and some moving things around. In other words there may be items/text on certain pages that will be moved to other pages etc. I'm not sure how that will play out with the search engines or if I shouldn't worry about it.

Any thoughts, comments, tips would really help.

Thanks a bunch,
N Fran

Simple rules. Most likely new functions and added content do not harm ranking, unless you change dramatically density of keywords. Make changes to indexed and high ranked pages carefully - remove only a small part of content at once, let SE-s crawl and index your change before implementing next move.

 

[shockie]

Simple rules. Most likely new functions and added content do not harm ranking, unless you change dramatically density of keywords. Make changes to indexed and high ranked pages carefully - remove only a small part of content at once, let SE-s crawl and index your change before implementing next move.

so basically... what i already said above. :hehe:

 

[franchise]

Thanks guys. Sounds like doing it in small bits is the way to go.
I appreciate the replies.

Happy Holidays,
N Fran

 

[dman_2007]

Like shockie have already said incremental changes are always when compared to sudden changes, and after a major site redesign you only risk losing SERP rankings not PR which depends on the backlinks to your site not on your site's design and content.