Will changing site structure affect serp ?

[joelwyn]

As title, currently my site rank for few keywords, but we have came to a decision to redesign the site and change of system, what i'm concern is will this change actually affect our ranking for our keywords ?

Thanks in advance,
Joel

[Tim Buchalka]

As title, currently my site rank for few keywords, but we have came to a decision to redesign the site and change of system, what i'm concern is will this change actually affect our ranking for our keywords ?

Thanks in advance,
Joel

Hi Joel,

If you change any URL on your site, then yes this can and will change your rankings. This is because google ranks "pages" and not "sites". So if you have a particular page ranking on page 1 for a keyword, and then redesign your site to put that content on a new page, google will eventually realise that page does not exist and remove it. Even if it didn't when people clicked the link in google they would go to a page that did not exist which would not be a good user experience.

Thankfully there is a solution. It's called a 301 redirect. Essentially it's a way of saying "hey Google this page has moved from here to there". All you do is put the current url and the new one in a special file called the .htaccess file (unless you are on a windows server) and then when google visits it will realise it has changed and then update it's database do that the new page ranks like the old one does.

Not that it might take a while for this to be reflected, and possibly for a short period of time you might seem to "disappear" from the search engines. That's the nature of the game.

Here is a site that shows how to do a 301 redirect.

I hope this helps.

Cheers


Tim

[Kerry]

Hi Tim, Re 301 redirects
We are looking to find a good bunch of long tail keywords and we want to make landing pages for each keyword.
From an SEO perspective is it possible to include these urls in our site map to have Google eat them but then simply make a 301 redirect to our main page. Or is that SEO suicide?

[Tim Buchalka]

Hi Tim, Re 301 redirects
We are looking to find a good bunch of long tail keywords and we want to make landing pages for each keyword.
From an SEO perspective is it possible to include these urls in our site map to have Google eat them but then simply make a 301 redirect to our main page. Or is that SEO suicide?

If you make a 301 redirect than google only looks at the "last" page the redirect goes to. So effectively google would read the sitemap as a pile of 301s pointing to the same page. What are you trying to achieve by this ?

[Cygnature]

Hi Tim,
As we are on the subject of 301 redirects, i am looking at moving my static HTML website with blog over to a full wordpress theme. In the process i also want to move it over to a new server so we can have more control over site, database, back-ups, content, etc. Our current webserver are quite restrictive in allowing us access. How we you go about addressesing the issue of redirects. Does it still work if you are moving to another server location. also am i right in assuming that i will still have to mantain presence on the original server so as to leave the 301 redirects?

Regards

[brett]

Hi there

The issue with changing your server and changing your website are two separate issues.

Assuming you are keeping the same domain name, then you switch this to the new server by changing the DNS records. These are the servers that tell your browser where to look for the domain you have typed in your browser or was in the link you clicked. Once you have switched your domain to point to your new server then your old server will no longer have anything to do with anything. People typing in your domain will end up pointing at your new server. (Note this changeover process can take a couple of days to fully complete)

The 301 directs tell the browser where to go if they try to get to one of your old pages. So if a link pointed at domain.com/oldpage you use the 301 to direct any traffic to domain.com/newpage, and the user will end up on your new page even if they clicked a link to your old page. You will need these on the new server. The old server will never see any of your traffic again.

Your new host will be able to help you with the DNS records thing.

Cheers
Brett

[ishuvonet]

Well I dont think that changing site structure will effect SERPs.There are many sites and blogs who change their site structure and they still have the good position in search engines that they had before changing.

[allenM]

Hi..


Redesign the website can effect your website but not a lot, meta tags should be remain same , may be your website after redesigning will get good rankings because of use of SE friendly html tags.


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