Redesign of a top ranking site... help!

[jgruen]

x = company name
c = com

I'm looking for a few "watch out for this" and "consider this" with this post.

My company site ranks #1 where we want it to. Great - right? Well the brass wants the website redesigned. This brass does not understand that messing with a top ranking website can have adverse reactions with the search engines, right?

This is the setup: x.c/en/index (also have 9 other language sites set up as such: x.c/de/index - all hosted in the US - which should probably change to help international rankings which aren't as good as the US site. That is a whole other topic.)

We want to start with a corporate site that branches into 3 areas (product A, product B, and solutions) The current site has 80% focus around product A - this is where we can't slip in the SERPs.

Is it better to continue to use x.c/en/corp/index, x.c/en/prodA/index and x.c/en/prodB/index ... you get the idea.

OR

Is it better to have a new corporate domain with links to a prod A domain, prod B domain, etc... Should we keep x.c associated with prod A so we don’t slip in the ranks? Because really x.c should be the corporate domain since x=company name.

OR

Should I hire an SEO consultant so the brass doesn’t chew my a$$ ?

Enough questions for now… bring it on! :rolleyes:

[Canonical]

I am a full-time SEO manager for an PR7 site that has about 85% brand awareness in the US. We compete in one of the 3 most competitive verticals on the web. I rank #1, 2, and 3 for some of the hardest to rank for single word head terms in our vertical.

In Dec 2008 we redesigned our entire site. At the same time we converted the site to a CMS which required all URLs on the site to change because the URLs from our CMS are all extensionless and our old URLs ended in .asp./.aspx extensions. We spent literally 7-8 months planning and executing the site redesign.

The project was a total success. Within 3-4 weeks all rankings were at least as good as before, most were better than ever. We're getting more organic traffic than ever since the redesign.

I recently wrote a blog post that you might find helpful on web site redesign with SEO in mind (http://www.canonicalseo.com/site-redesign-and-seo/). It's a bit long, but contains a lot of lessons learned and how tos for redesign projects from an SEO perspective. Use what you find useful.

Hope it helps.

[seomagician]

Totally agree with Canonical. Just did a similar change and got all page one rankings back qucikly.

Canonical-nice write up.

[jgruen]

Thank you Canonical - I look forward to reading your blog!

Yes - we understand that this is going to take some major planning. We don't do anything here without much consideration.

Thanks again!

[inertia]

If you're just re-designing a CSS/div site it's not going to make much (if any) difference as the main ranking factors are all still in place. If youre restructuring the site then it's a lot more complicated.

If youre restructuring watch out for; URLs - keep them the same forever (ideally) but, if you have to change the URL or folder structure, 301 redirect any old URL to it's new equivalent. If it doesn't have a new equivalent then you should redirect to either a search page/home page/or best equivalent (depending on your personal preference). Also watch out for the internal linking - if this site's SEO is working as it is now then try to keep any menu structures as they were.

Also, dont loose any body content related "stuff". Keep all in content links, all headings, alt tags, images etc in place!

[danners02]

so long as your underlying HTML code has a low code:copy ratio, validates (preferably), is semantic (h1, h2, h3, p, ul, li, etc) and the unique content of each page is first in the html with common content below, you should do fine. Keep the written copy the same (or very similar) to existing - certainly keep the search phrases in place in the copy.
New URLs - always difficult, but 301 old URLs and use Google webmaster tools to catch any that you miss.
Organise your content logically - i would not have an /en/ directory - make English the primary language and use root dir. (you can use directories for other languages, eg: /es/, /fr/, /de/, etc)

[ncseo]

you should have no problem IF you do a 301 redirect from old url to new url

every URL needs to be redirect to the new URL

depending on the authority of the new/old domain it may take days or weeks for the SERP to change

[sharonjackson]

If youre restructuring watch out for; URLs - keep them the same forever (ideally) ...

Also, don't lose any body content related "stuff". Keep all in content links, all headings, alt tags, images etc in place!

Totally correct. I just did a redesign for a page rank 5 site, kept all content the same and especially the urls. No change in ranking whatsoever.

[SemAdvance]

If you're just re-designing a CSS/div site it's not going to make much (if any) difference as the main ranking factors are all still in place. If youre restructuring the site then it's a lot more complicated.

If youre restructuring watch out for; URLs - keep them the same forever (ideally) but, if you have to change the URL or folder structure, 301 redirect any old URL to it's new equivalent. If it doesn't have a new equivalent then you should redirect to either a search page/home page/or best equivalent (depending on your personal preference). Also watch out for the internal linking - if this site's SEO is working as it is now then try to keep any menu structures as they were.

Also, dont loose any body content related "stuff". Keep all in content links, all headings, alt tags, images etc in place!

Dead on!!!!!!!

Design has no impact on SERPs whatsoever!!!

Code is always separated from content to determine rankings.

Further quality anchor text links to your sites pages will overcome any onsite weaknesses.

For example if you search for credit cards - visa.com is # 1 or # 2, yet they have no content and the keyword is not in their title tag.

Their rankings are from the links pointing to their site.

;->

[FoundByDesign]

It seems as if all you are doing is adding new products, or at least expanding the website to showcase more than the one product it is already well known for. That won't take a major redesign, unless you just want a new look.

Since the website itself has been known solely for one product, it will be difficult and take a while to migrate it to a multi product website, especially if your home page is dominated currently by the one item. I'd probably suggest you move the entire website to a new domain dedicated to that product (a subdomain of the current site would be fine) and do 301 redirects to that domain for a while so that the main company name domain is no longer solely containing that product. Then work on getting as many linking partners to change their links to the new domain. After a few months, when the new domain is solely catching all the traffic and SERPS for that product (and after getting as many links changed to the new domain), then remove the 301s to open the main domain up again for new content, linking to the other 2 products' websites.

Right now, if ABCInc.com is all about blue widgets, but you want to add yellow gadgets and green goblets without sacrificing SERPS for your blue widgets, transferring the current site by 301s to bluewidgets.ABCinc.com, then adding yellowgadgets.ABCinc.com and greengoblets.ABCinc.com allows you to have 3 distinct sites for each product. Once ABCinc.com is no longer linked to as the place for Blue Widgets (such as < a href="abcinc.com">Blue Widgets</a>) but rather the new subdomain is getting majority of those links, you can then remove the 301s from the main domain and use it again with little impact to the SERPS on blue widgets.

Did that make sense?

The good thing is that you can immediately make the change to the subdomain, immediately add the other subdomains and let the time it would take for figuring all this out establish the new websites for products B & C. After a while, the main website can be used as a traffic sign, simply telling people that visit from name recognition and marketing where they can find each of your products. And with three distinct websites focused solely on one product, you can really focus on the SEO for each product.

Again... did that make sense? It always sounds clearer in my head!

[jgruen]

Ahhh - such wonderful advice! Thank you all and please keep it coming.

Correction: It is a redesign AND restructure. We are moving from a single site with everything, to a corporate site with 3 branches.

[FoundByDesign]

Ahhh - such wonderful advice! Thank you all and please keep it coming.

Correction: It is a redesign AND restructure. We are moving from a single site with everything, to a corporate site with 3 branches.


In that case, I would certainly consider using subdomains off the main domain. This not only separates the three "branches" but also ties them to the corporate brand (if indeed you are seeking such a tie)

Subdomains are treated as unique websites by SE's, so each will be judged on its own merit and content. That also means though, that you will need to focus efforts on the other products to gain as many links as possible, but I assume you planned that already.

[cg0404]

I am assuming you have a decent Google Page Rank and plenty of Quality Back-Links which will go with the new site as long as you don't change or redirect the Domain. The other thing is your content, consider taking the existing text content, Title, Meta Description and Meta Keyword information along with the new site, provided you are only doing a shell change. If you are going to change text content, I would consider doing a comparison to the sites below you to make sure how you place and where with the content. i.e., volume of text, keyword placement and keyword ratio to the total text on the page. I would also continue to build quality backlinks through the process.

Best of luck to you and I agree with the other post, you can make it happen without a hitch, just make sure all your ducks are in a row!

[inertia]

In that case, I would certainly consider using subdomains off the main domain. This not only separates the three "branches" but also ties them to the corporate brand (if indeed you are seeking such a tie)

Agreed. If the brand is strong enough this is the best way to go.


Subdomains are treated as unique websites by SE's, so each will be judged on its own merit and content. That also means though, that you will need to focus efforts on the other products to gain as many links as possible, but I assume you planned that already.

I'm not sure sub domains are treated like completely different sites, well not in the rankings anyway.

Subdomains and subdirectories (http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/subdomains-and-subdirectories/)

[subsystems]

While not directly SERP related my experiences below have SE consequences that are worth some consideration.

I did a major redesign of a site a while back. We had different domain names for each section of the site. The main products, clearance products, seasonal products, secure, and knowledge base each had their own domain name. The navigation was the only thing connecting the sites together. We decided later to simplify things and moved the separate domains into sub-domains. It is surprising the little things that are easier to deal with using sub-domains. Cookies for one become capable of being common to the entire domain including sub-domains. So things like maintaining common shopping carts and persistent user logins are vastly simplified. Sub-folders have the disadvantage of not having their own root directory. So URLs are often longer and harder for visitors to remember.

We didn't see any significant SERP changes. We did see better conversions over time. The new site design made unified site code and reuse much simpler. This translated to quicker updates and a better visitor experience. What I mean is things like simply <include> common elements and site-wide CSS, sub-domain wide and page specific CSS is easier to manage. Some items become as simple as *.mydomain.com rather than individually listing each and every domain. Cross site scripting can be a big fat pain to set cookies reliably.

From a spider/SE perspective it is far easer to restrict a sub-domain than a sub-folder. If you have an admin.mydomain.com you can easily restrict spiders using a simple login or IP range restriction to the entire sub-domain site. Yet if you use www.mydomain.com/admin it is possible that somewhere you could inadvertently create a hole in your security. Simply the act of adding the /admin folder in your robots.txt file will make others aware of the sites existence. Generally the admin sub-domain won't have propagated the DNS servers worldwide because a DNS lookups for that host won't have gone far. ISPs of employees mostly. It won't effect experienced hackers but it might slow down the less experienced ones.

Also, make sure NO employees are using the Alexa tool-bar. I about choked when I saw admin.mydomain.com show up in the Alexa stats for the site.

[ncseo]

I think you maybe misreading Matt Cutts article about host crowding

Matt Cutts and all the other articles are talking about IF those sites rank on page 1 then Google will decide which part of the domain to use.

Host crowding is about how Google delivers results when there are multiple listings from the same domain on a given page.




Agreed. If the brand is strong enough this is the best way to go.



I'm not sure sub domains are treated like completely different sites, well not in the rankings anyway.

Subdomains and subdirectories (http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/subdomains-and-subdirectories/)

[inertia]

well not in the rankings anyway



Matt Cutts and all the other articles are talking about IF those sites rank on page 1 then Google will decide which part of the domain to use.

Host crowding is about how Google delivers results when there are multiple listings from the same domain on a given page.

So this could be a relevant concern for the poster then? Or am i missing something, its been a long day!

[ncseo]

sorry was responding to your

"I'm not sure sub domains are treated like completely different sites, well not in the rankings anyway"


So this could be a relevant concern for the poster then? Or am i missing something, its been a long day!

[SnerdeyWebs]

Oh, I really like this idea :)

"Should I hire an SEO consultant so the brass doesn’t chew my a$$ ?"

LOL - Actually, it's back to the old, old saying.. if it's not broke, don't fix it. But, there are many ways to redesign a site and not skip a beat.

If your company is doing that well and has the cash, it's worth hiring someone.

[nickoran]

I think essentially the play it safe model would be to keep what you have and just expand upon it. The actual design part, for me at least, should be kept as a seperate aspect. redesigning a site should not effect SEO if its litterally just the design and css that changes. there are some coding aspects such as using div's over tables which you might be able to change from an old site etc but im sure your aware of those by now. as for the restructuring, if you rank already and are happy with it, there is no need to mess with it, keep as much as you can and redirect what you cant.