Site Redesign and PR

[theswami]

Has anyone had any GOOD experience with site redesign and whether you've lost or kept your existing PR?

Our site is vastly dynamic and we would like to update the site using virtual-static pages which would entail page name changes. We would do this to try to gain more favor from Google, but don't know if the end justifies the means; if we're going to be sandboxed for another 14 months.

If anyone has any experience doing this, I'd love to hear your (horror) story.

Thanks

[bhartzer]

I think there's some confusion.

You get PR (PageRank) from links to your pages, not by doing a site redesign. PR has nothing to do with actual search engine rankings, which is dependent on the search engine's algorithm. PR is only one part of the Google algorithm.

That said, I highly suggest that you keep the same URLs after a site re-design if at all possible. You can rewrite the new URLs so that they conform to the old URLs using mod rewrite or isapi rewrite. This will allow you to maintain your current search engine rankings while benefitting from a page "update" (the search engines like new, fresh, updated content on your site).

If you must use completely new URLs on your site, then you'll need to redirect the old URls to the new ones using a 301 Permanent Redirect.

Also, check the backlinks going to the interior pages of your site and try to get those updated, as well. If another site links to one of your old pages, then you'll want to contact them and ask them to change the link.

[theswami]

Thanks for the feedback, but my question is based on what I've heard from some people where they've made some internal changes to their pages and have lost either the PR for that page or those page keywords have been dumped from the SERPs altogether.

I also forgot to mention that we are currently sandboxed for the last 14 months and do not want to do anything that would make Google think that we are a new site, i.e. bought an existing URL and put up new content hoping to keep the PR.

I'm aware that the PR comes mostly from IBL's but in making these dynamic pages static, we are going to change what has already been indexed by Google.

I've also read other stories about people changing the character case in the URL and that page getting dumped. So I'm really just trying to find out if anyone has made this type of change to their site and Google seeing that the content has been refreshed and in turn having the site keywords boosted on the SERPs.

Thanks again.

[incrediblehelp]

I have noticed websites get sandboxed (if thats what you wan to call it) within Google when a redesign happens. Of course this redesign was done with out the proper 3021 redirects in place. If you folloow bhartzer's recommendations you should be all right as long as the new website stays within the same domain name for obvious IBL reasons.

[cspelts]

I think that if you do it properly, changing the names can help slightly with search engine rankings.

I recently changed some pages from search_term.asp to search-term.asp. I had read that dashes are preferable to underscores with Google, so I decided it was worth taking a temporary hit in the rankings, if it could mean better rankings in the future. The good news is that there was no temporary negative hit - and my rankings did go up. It didn't make a huge difference, but there was no downside, so it was definitely worth it.

Just make sure that you do a 301 redirect to the new page!

[theswami]

Thanks for the feedback.

What do you think would happen if we were to leave the pages as is while introducing the new non-dynamic structure? This would mean that we would have dual content on the site though - until the new pages become indexed, then remove the old pages with a 301 in place.

Do you think that we would be penalized for having double content on our site linked to through two unique home page links? One would link to dynamic pages with a "?" query string in place and the other would not. Would Google just ignore the new pages thinking they're meaningless Spam pages or would the give them preferential treatment because they are seemingly static?

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

[cspelts]

Originally Posted by theswami

What do you think would happen if we were to leave the pages as is while introducing the new non-dynamic structure?

I honestly don't see the point. If you do a 301 redirect from old to new page, the search engines will figure it out the next time they visit, and in the meantime any human visitors will also get the newest, freshest content. There's really no reason to leave up the old pages.

I had a similiar situation once and I kept the old pages up with links to the new - and it turned out to be a mistake. Google initially ranked all the pages, but eventually filtered out the new pages as duplicate content. I had to remove the old pages and redirect the traffic before the new pages showed up in Google again.

[theswami]

How about the page rank for your redirected pages? When you used the 301's on your site, did you get the page rank forwarded? - if you did have page rank on those internal pages to start with.

Thanks for any help and appreciate the input.

[cyanide]

Originally Posted by theswami

Thanks for the feedback, but my question is based on what I've heard from some people where they've made some internal changes to their pages and have lost either the PR for that page or those page keywords have been dumped from the SERPs altogether.

Then you're listening to the wrong people.. as far as pr goes.
search engine placement is not a direct refelction of pr. In the last pr update, on one of my sites, the pr dropped from 4 to 3, yet the vistors from search engines tripled.
During this time, I also went through a site re-design

The main thing you need to do is set up 301 permanent redirects, for as many pages as possible, so that SE bots and people are not hitting a brick wall.
A custom 404error page will help too

[cspelts]

Originally Posted by theswami

When you used the 301's on your site, did you get the page rank forwarded?

In my case the visible PR did not transfer immediately. The new pages had no visible PR until the latest PR update last month - but at that point every page on the site went up in PR, and the new pages kept pace with the old.

For me it was not a problem to temporarily have no visible PR on a new page - I was more concerned with search engine rankings and the amount of traffic generated, and both of those were positively impacted.

[Paul Brin]

Isn't it true that whether or not you do anything to your web site your page ranking may change?
I didn't even take PR into consideration when I decided to upgrade my website to W3C compliant XHTML using CSS last month, but already I have seen a marked increase in hits!
I also had to get rid of the Google search box on each page because they wouldn't provide me with XHTML code and wouldn't approve my hack so, alas, they now sit all alone on the only non-compliant page on my site. The upside is that my new search page has all the other engines listed and I'm getting more hits from them now.

Good Luck!

[theswami]

Thanks for all the info on this, it seems that we will just ignore the whole PR thing and just get on with creating the best site that we can.

Also just to reiterate, our site went live last June of 2004, so we're coming up on one year of sandbox! I really hope that anything we do now won't hinder any potential progress we've made getting out of this thing! I've read that the average seems to be between 6 to 8 months on being sandboxed, and have read a couple of posts from people that have been there for at least 14 months, so I hope we're not going to be here for another 2 months.

FYI: I also noticed that we've just been picked up by archive.org and based on some theories that I've heard being kicked around, there is some tie between archive.org and Google's sandbox? As crazy as it sounds, I sure hope so...

Been waiting for almost a year to get the site into Dmoz as well!

I'll let you know what happens in the coming month(s) on getting out of the sandbox.

Good luck to all of you and thanks again.

[kgun]

Quote
"Thanks for all the info on this, it seems that we will just ignore the whole PR thing and just get on with creating the best site that we can".

Improving your site is a continual race. It is a never ending Marathon race. Getting a site on the web, is the easiest thing in the world. Done in less than 10 minutes on a free service with good templates. Having a usful site is another question.

1. I have changed my metatags for the robots to
index, nofollow (and noarchive for the
GoogleBot).
2. As I understand, some search engines do not like
cloacked or redirected pages.
3. I have the following http://www.bandtrading.com/
redirection and this http://skupot.com/
cloacked version. The Bots shall not tell me
what to do on THIS http://multifinanceit.com/
project. It is used as examples to explain
digital branding on my Norwegian site.

Good enough is best and in the long run we are all dead, but some well fed. Poor me.

KBleivik
http://multifinanceit.com/
http://www.multifinansit.no/
http://www.dinnettbutikk.no/

Macromedia, I simply love the software, and I use it in a very primitive way.

[theswami]

Thanks for the very unusual response; I'm not exactly sure what to do with your information though.

What I will do is keep working on the site, updating content and keeping the entire site fresh.

Does anyone have any comments about the almost 14 months of sandboxing that we're receiving from Google? Has anyone ever been in the sandbox for this long and come out of it yet? I've read a few posts in WebProWorld from others that have been in that long, but haven't heard the outcome yet.

Thanks for any help on this one.