Site Redesign: Potential Problems?

[Highland]

We're looking at a cleanup of our site and making our navigation menu simpler and more visual. The problem is there's a massive fear that we will incur some sort of SEO hit at a time when we can ill afford one.

The bulk of the changes are around some tertiary pages that have some SEO value but are not primary targets or traffic sources. The pages with content aren't moving URLs or changing, nor is the core content of the site, just the template. The new template, I feel, is easier to navigate and easier to spider (menus are flyout divs with images).

So are there any tips or tricks to changing the layout of your site without hurting SEO? Anything we need to avoid?

[SEO02]

Hi

I guess I have to say it has some impact. Having a site structure change will score a new value for googlebot when it crawl your page. New value will be then recalculate, reindex and refresh from the index in Google. It will then cause you a lower SERP ranking with your targeted keywords...

[Francisco_Meza]

Read this: http://searchengineland.com/interview-google-search-quality-rater-108702

It what Google Quality raters look for in websites. I don't think it'll have an effect all all. You're not changing the URLS or the content. You're just changing the NAV and the look and feel. Build to convert more visitors. Have money prepared for an Adwords campaign in case your rankings go down.

[Highland]

Interesting article. Certainly helps to explain short term dips after a change. I'd venture that Google removes some trust ofter a change and then has their quality reviewers look at it to make sure it's still trustworthy. I think we're going to push the template changes back to the off-season since we can't afford even a small hit for the busy one.