Site Change - Modification

[fxman]

I have to make some major changes to one of my websites and I'm afraid of what might happen. The site is 1.5 years old and ranks well for some competitive words.

It is a wordpress engine driven site with a simplified structure for internal linking. Actually there are only 8 total internal links. All links will remain the same, but all the content will be new. There will be a different layout as well, but overall the content relates to the original site. There will be a lot more content as well. Title tags will remain the same and all my inbound links will stay active as well.

With all the internal links remaining the same name, and the home page being my main hit page off the Search engines:

By making these layout and content changes, how will this affect my current rankings and indexing?
How can I prevent being dropped?
Any reccomendations?

Thanks,
FXMAN

[incrediblehelp]

How did the content change exactly?

[fxman]

It hasn't changed yet. The content will cover the same topic, but we will be adding a whole bunch more. We offered a service, which gave more of a description about what we do and now we are going to be more of a content driven site about the same topic, but all the words need to be changed on all the pages. If I had to change the content, even though it is the same topic, what would be the best way to do this?

Thanks,
FXman

[incrediblehelp]

I dont see much wrong with changing content while keeping it under the same topic. You should be fine, but no one can say for sure. Consider making your changes page by page to regulate ranking/traffic changes.