Should I be afraid to launch new website?

[wellnesswooz]

I have been redesigning my website in the last 2 months. I'm almost ready to finally launch it. Now I wonder how it will effect my rankings. I have taken a few measures to avoid problems such as:

1. I kept the page names as they are.
2. I kept the structure of the website
3. Optimized the structure of my pages which should benefit my SEO rather then harm it.

Yet, if I would experience a drop in rankings, could I regain my rankings by switching to the previous website?

[EGOL]

Before you launch a new website be sure that all of your major on-page optimization elements are in place.

These are things like <title><h1> <h2> alt= breadcrumbs and anything else that you have used to optimize your pages.</p> <p>It sounds like you have been careful and have done things to kick your optimization up a notch.</p> <p>If your design improves the visitor experience your rankings should go up as your rate of earning tweets, likes links, etc increases.</p> <p>Toss it up and Good Luck.</p> <p> </p> <p> </p></title>

[asystematic]

You should crawl your website for 4XX for sure.

[wellnesswooz]

Thanks for the tips, but I really would like a answer to this question:

if I would experience a drop in rankings, could I regain my rankings by switching to the previous website?

[KeriMorgret]

I haven't heard too many people talk about switching back to the old website, and sorry I don't have any advice to give you there.

Since your original question was asked, this great post about migrating your website has been published on the SEOmoz blog that can really help make sure you have a lot of the correct things done for a site migration. Best of luck!

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/web-site-migration-guide-tips-for-seos