Changing Text on Pages

[Tompt]

How established is your site, how long have you been working on it?

If it's fairly established and older I wouldn't expect a huge amount of change if you were to cut your content somewhat (500-700 is still a lot of words on the page), you might experience a bit of a wobble as google gets used to things, but it shouldn't make a huge difference.

Worst case scenario you can put the old text back and pretend that nothing ever happened.

If you change things and it does make a significant difference it would be interesting to hear about it.

You might want to experiment with your new text first using some sort of A\B testing. That way you'll preserve your current rankings, and test your new text to see if it's going to improve your situation. It's worthwhile testing first before making the switch.

At the most basic end of the spectrum how you have Google website optimizer:

http://www.google.com/websiteoptimizer

but there are some great paid for options out there that do an excellent job.

[Tompt]

I feel the need to clarify something, are you suggesting hiding the existing text behind an image with the new text on it?

I don't think that would be a fantastic idea, it's the sort of thing that can get a site in trouble.

[JeremyNelson58]

I was recommending embedding copy in an image so it doesn't get crawled and rankings aren't affected by any changes in content.

[RussNauta]

No, I'm not engaging in anything like that. What I meant to say is that the images which haven't been changed since the site was launched haven't changed, and are sales heavy. The thing is that the disconnect occurs with the lengthiness of the text within the body. I got too descriptive because I took the approach of writing good content while disregarding the sales aspect, which is obviously the ultimate goal.

[RussNauta]

The site was registered in '07. I've been working on it fairly actively since '09 and started breaking through this past October or so (meaning that I started popping into pages 1,2 for the words/phrases I'm targeting.

What I did do to test sales copy was build some internal pages with absolutely no pathway. I then took those pages and ran some PPC tests to make sure that those pages would convert as there would be no reason to switch out the copy if they didn't. Granted, PPC conversion rates IMO aren't the same as those facilitated by organic paths, but it's really the best test for what I'm trying to do. It wouldn't make sense to switch the pages out if they didn't convert.

I wouldn't mind losing some of my traffic initially, 20-30%, as I could probably get it back over time (hopefully), but during this last ongoing update, I saw a jump rather than a decline as I don't do anything sketchy. Having said that, when you don';t do anything sketchy or questionable, it takes time to pop-up for terms. I'm seeing some pretty serious momentum and I don't want to jeopardize that. Granted I haven't invested too much $$ in the process, other than paying a few freelance writers, but I've dumped tons of sweat equity into it.

[Tompt]

I would imagine it's going to be very unlikely that you'll experience a knock then, make the change then sit back and wait for a little to see what happens. Expect a wobble, and don't panic if there is a slight drop at first.

In the unlikely event that the text does make a big difference, it's the easiest thing in the world to just put the old stuff back and your ranking should return with equal speed.

1500 words is a lot to have on the homepage, so you might even find it does your position some good to thin it out a little.

In the long run there really is only one way to find out unfortunately.

[Tompt]

Apologies, I misunderstood "in an image on top of the text." so please ignore me.

[RussNauta]

Thanks. I think I'm going to give it a whirl and see what happens. I mean if the pages aren't converting then all the traffic in the world isn't gonna do any good.

[Tompt]

Absolutely, traffic is nice, but it is still a business.

You should know fairly quickly how things are going. I'd give it about a month.

If you have the time maybe blog about it on here, it would be interesting to see how it goes.

Best of luck to you.

[RussNauta]

Thanks. I'm going to document it provided it doesn't take too much time