# Can changing my website content change my rankings?



## TshirtGuru (Jul 9, 2008)

I want to change our website content and design but keep the same URL. Can that change my ranking? Is there a way to avoid the change in ranking when redesigning a website?


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## out da box (May 1, 2007)

I do know that google searches for keywords in the content of your site. Google also gives a penalty for duplicate content excess keywords, etc. Takes a seo guru to really play google well, I don't know enough to play google well. But content is king. And it takes google a while to update it's database to reflect your site changes. If you have a high search engine ranking now, I'd be careful fooling with it.


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## TshirtGuru (Jul 9, 2008)

out da box said:


> I do know that google searches for keywords in the content of your site. Google also gives a penalty for duplicate content excess keywords, etc. Takes a seo guru to really play google well, I don't know enough to play google well. But content is king. And it takes google a while to update it's database to reflect your site changes. If you have a high search engine ranking now, I'd be careful fooling with it.


Hm, yeah I have a great ranking right now for the past year. I wanted to change the look, maybe I'll keep the content the same but just change the look and keep all keywords and stuff identical. 

Or maybe I'll leave it alone. lol I'm scared to touch it right now, it would be really bad if my ranking disapeared.


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## maiasaura (Nov 11, 2009)

Changing the look will not affect your rankings in any way, unless you screw up things like meta keywords and alt tags. Changing your content will most likely improve your rankings. Google likes rich content sites. You get dinged for just selling and not offering any origianl material, in fact.


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## tgoeltz (Aug 7, 2007)

I guess it depends on what you mean by "change". If you are just editing the content a bit, making improvements here and there, it probably won't change dramatically. However, I've had sites that I have changed totally (new pages and content) and the ranking dropped like a rock. This was an HTML to HTML change. I've never quite figured out why because I thought that the new site was more pertinent to the search terms, cleaner code, better tags, etc. 

No one totally understands Google's ranking criteria, so if you have a good ranking I would suggest making gradual, minor changes (and watch your ranking very carefully).


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## Austin300 (May 24, 2009)

The all powerful page ranking


One thing that I have found is that if you 
have pictures on your site and they are
using your page name you are also using
key words that match up with the tags 
on your site. If you click on the properties
of the photos on a site you can see what
the search engine is reading. If you change
your photos around then you could change
the ranking.

Do a search for your site and check Images
to see what is being saved by google.

Also, If you are looking at your website and
take your eyes to the top blue bar of IE then
you should see a separate description for each
page across the top.

When you go to separate pages of a website
it should not be duplicated. This is easily
added to your site if you are familiar with
your page designer.

If the blue bar at the top of your monitor says HOME PAGE or something similar
when you open your site you need to make some changes.


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