Pitfalls of a website redesign

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Older websites tend to have some type of SERP ranking. We have found that most of the time the ranking is not on page 1 for the important keyword phrases. However, as part of the redesign process you should try to maintain whatever ranking you do have. The only way to do this is to copy the exact content from the older site and put it in the redesigned site. You also must keep the exact same web page addresses. E.g. if your page name is www.domain.com/home-page.html you cannot change it to www.domain.com/homepage.html. Even though it looks like a simple change, Google will view this as a brand new page, and it will erase your previous ranking.

When your web pages addresses are renamed like this we call it "restructuring."

Unfortunately this restructuring is sometimes completely unavoidable. If you are converting from an older site into a content management system, or an ecommerce system, page addresses are very difficult to maintain. There are other options available, but it would require the services of a web server engineer to get it right.

In the end you will need to weigh the importance of the new website structure and if your ranking is valuable enough to spend the money to preserve it.