Need some advice

mikebrad · #1 11-23-2007, 03:45 PM

I could have posted this in the SEO section but it's more of a personal decision and I wanted everyone's opinion first.

So I have this website, actually my first website. It's over 2 years old and is doing pretty good in the serps but it was my first website and there are a few flaws with it.

Namely:
It's too hard to update content, there is no templating system or cms.
It's ugly by today's standards

I built a custom template and hired someone to do a new logo and I want to put it all on a fairly smooth cms. However, I'm a little aprehensive about doing this. The urls will not match up, so I will have to redirect them all.

What do you think the fallout would be from redirecting 200 indexed pages? The main page ranks for terms like "poker sites", etc. Would this trigger the phantom sandbox, causing me to lose everything?

Graham · #2 11-23-2007, 04:39 PM

I can't comment exactly on your situation, but a long time ago I redirected all of the pages on my site. I was worried about a similar fallout, but it actually worked out that the new pages were ranking much better. It is a risk, but you could always test a few pages at a time and see how it goes first before doing the whole site.

mikebrad · #3 11-23-2007, 04:42 PM

yeah, I was thinking about doing that but I'm pretty sure I'd have to install the cms in a subfolder to do that.

I'm thinking that in the long run, I need to do this. My urls are not the best anyway. For example: ultimate bet review page is ub.html.

Thanks for the advice Graham.

Itay · #4 11-24-2007, 04:29 AM

ugly or not ugly - it is all about content...

mftpg · #5 11-24-2007, 06:21 AM

**not an expert disclaimer**

Went through almost exactly what you describe, albeit with a newer site, back in August following some grest feedback / advice from people here at PAW.

Basically the only thing that stayed was the content, re-did the URL structures (from root right through to articles), the design and everything else.

Experience was that the SERPS hit was big but temporary - took about 10 days for the new URLs to come into the rankings and maybe another couple of weeks before the old ones stopped appearing... has been onwards and upwards ever since - a risk in some ways but with hindsight worth it 100%.

We tried re-directs but never got them working properly. With these in addition you should do even better!

Cheers, Mark