Build New Site Without Losing Rankings

[WebbyNabler]

Good morning SEOmoz community. I have a question which I am pretty sure I already know the answer to, however i thought I would reach out to my fellow experts to see if anyone had some great advice.

I would really like to give my website a makeover.  i have two thoughts on this, one is to scrap the site completely and start fresh, the other would be to only change it visually, but keep all the content and on-page optimization. I am terrified of losing my rankings. I am ranked position 1 and 2 for highly competitive terms and have another 15 - 20 keywords on page 1. Any advice would be tremendously appreciated!!!

[TomRayner]

Hey there

Option 2 would be the best way to maintain your rankings.  If you can ensure that the content, on-page elements and links pointing towards the page stay the same, as in the URLs remain the same, then there should be no reason why changing the design would result in a rankings drop.  A design change would only trigger a drop if it came along with loads of ads above the fold, or if it included hidden links on the page through the use of CSS, in order pass PageRank elsewhere.

If you wanted to keep the elements the same but did want to change the URLs, I would ensure that you take any old URLs that have been changed and add a 301 redirect to the new URL.  This will ensure all of the inbound links are passed on.

Hope this helps.

[Chris.Menke]

Webby,

Here is some additional reading.  Website makeover without losing rankings

[WebbyNabler]

Thanks!!

[WebbyNabler]

Thank you!