Don't Update A Website Too Much At Once?

[Amir W.]

I've heard that, for ranking purposes, it's best to make minor updates to a website, gradually over time, rather than major changes over a short perid of time. Is there any validity to that idea?

And if so, what would be the best way to approach a complete site redesign?

[bhartzer]

It really depends on your site and your topic. Some industries are used to being updated regularly...like a news site. But others don't necessarily need to be updated regularly.

If you're doing a whole site redesign then I would just do it. Just make sure that you have the proper 301 redirects in place when you "flip the switch".

[ktaylor310]

I follow the "if it isn't broke don't fix it" mentality - but only if you already have good ranking in Google. If you don't have ranking, then a redesign won't hurt. If you do have high ranking, then it is best to experiment little by little. Since Google goes as far as to assign different rank based on singular or plural search terms, it's clear that even small changes can make a big difference.

[torka]

When you're talking a "complete redesign" it depends on what you mean. If you're just talking about updating the look/feel of the pages, but retaining the same navigational structure, content and URLs, then just go ahead and let 'er rip. The SEs really don't care what your pages look like, so if that's all that's changing, it will probably have no effect on the SEs.

My company updated the design of our site last year without a hitch. But in our case, all the other stuff stayed the same -- same URLs with the same content and the same internal navigation.

If, on the other hand, you're going to be updating content, reorganizing the site architecture, moving to a new CMS that generates new URLs (and which for some reason you can't rewrite to match your old URLs), etc. then in my experience you need to proceed with more caution.

--Torka

[T.I.M]

Originally Posted by torka

When you're talking a "complete redesign" it depends on what you mean. If you're just talking about updating the look/feel of the pages, but retaining the same navigational structure, content and URLs, then just go ahead and let 'er rip. The SEs really don't care what your pages look like, so if that's all that's changing, it will probably have no effect on the SEs.

My company updated the design of our site last year without a hitch. But in our case, all the other stuff stayed the same -- same URLs with the same content and the same internal navigation.

If, on the other hand, you're going to be updating content, reorganizing the site architecture, moving to a new CMS that generates new URLs (and which for some reason you can't rewrite to match your old URLs), etc. then in my experience you need to proceed with more caution.

--Torka

Couldn't agree more with this post. It really depends on the type of site you're running. For example my website (in my signature) needs to be updated daily because it offers advice and showcases Torontonian entrepreneurs. Other websites can do without updates. Depends on what you're aiming for.

[Amir W.]

So if I have a bunch of updates I'd like to make to my site, and it's ranking well, then it's better to do them gradually over a few months, instead of all at once? the updates include adding some new pages and changing some content.

Is it bad to add a lot of content at once? it is better to add it gradually over time?

[Logan]

Yes, if it substantially changes the 'focus' of your website to visitors/search engines.

Amir, my approach would be to leave everything as is. Don't remove/change much but instead add a small section of 5-10 pages for starters. Then give it awhile and see how that goes with the search engines. Then add on slowly/regularly in the same manner over time.

In general, don't remove/change but instead think add

Test a small amount first to see how it goes to establish a 'benchmark', then continue to follow that formula in the same manner over time.

[ktaylor310]

Yes and amen Logan! One of my clients sells merchant accounts & credit card equipment. Common sense tells you that the two items compliment each other, but in Googleland they must decide which category is more relevant for your site, i.e...

credit card equipment = sites like Nurit, Verifone, etc.
merchant accounts - sites like Bank of America, Chase, Money Tree, etc.

When you add a bunch of content that refers to one subject, you could actually dilute the weight of the other. Does that make sense? In my case, adding a ton of information about credit card equipment could possibly boost his ranking in that area, but potentially cause a drop in ranking in the other. Adding fresh content is important to Google, but the content has to be relevant and focused.

You might read a little about SEO "siloing", "themes" and the use of "no follow" in your links. It can help in the future as you plan out how to add content.

Here's an excerpt from bruceclay.com:

It is the nature of a search engine to try and dissect a site into distinct subjects that add up into an overall theme thereby representing a clear straightforward subject relevancy. More often than not a Web site is a disjointed array of unrelated information with no central theme and thereby suffers in search engines for sought after keyword rankings. Siloing a Web site will serve to clarify your Web site's subject relevance and will lay the ground work for high keyword rankings.

All that said... Yes, add slowly. Add small sections and then wait 4-5 weeks before adding anything else.

[torka]

Actually, Google (and the other major SE's) index and rank pages, not sites.

There's no reason why adding a page -- or even an entire site section -- on Topic A should cause another page on Topic B to drop in rankings. If that were true, pages on highly-active mega-sites like Amazon and eBay could never rank for anything.

There are a lot of people out there who claim Google does some kind of "themeing" at the website level. I've never seen any persuasive evidence they do "themeing" at all, but if they do, it would almost certainly be primarily at the page level.

The search engines are very good at identifying and evaluating pages. Websites, not so much. I have seen a lot of evidence that search engines don't think about the concept of "website" the same way we humans do. Which makes sense, really. Not because they can't do so -- if they put their minds to it, they certainly could. But there's no reason for them to devote the massive computing power it would take to make that sort of evaluation, when evaluating at the page level gets them to where they need to be already.

Remember, domain does not equal website. There are a lot of different variations on how a website can be structured, including housing multiple standalone websites on a single domain, or having a single site that spans multiple domains (I work every day with a site that's made up of pages spread across four domains, as it happens). What's obvious to us as humans (based on visual design, for instance) is not at all obvious to an algorithm that can't "see" what the pages look like.

IMO, if the content is relevant to your business and has the potential to bring you new prospects or make you additional sales, then by all means add it whenever you're ready. There is no need to worry about diluting anything. Google wants original, valuable content -- why would they set up algorithms that would penalize you for adding more of what they're looking for?

Of course, changing or deleting existing content should be approached with more caution, especially if you're concerned about maintaining rankings and traffic, but adding more useful, original, visitor-friendly content should never be a concern.

--Torka

[ktaylor310]

I guess it is hard to prove out any of these theories, but I can say that according to our statistics my client's rankings have gone up since we broke our site into themes: (1) merchant account/banking info (2) credit card equipment (3) small business info (4) retail business info. It is possible, though, that as we began focusing on themes the natural by-product was the addition of more carefully planned and organized, relevant content.

Quote by Matt Cutts:

Matt: Theme across the website, don't theme across the website, what do you do? Try it and see what works for you. You end up with lots of related words and if you're doing the synonyms then Google doesn't have to. Use synonyms in a natural way. Don't force keywords. Bio and biography are synonyms. But not apple and apples.

I guess my train of thought is themeing helps Google in the above way and also helps the site owner stay on the "relevancy track". Works for us

I'd be interested in your thoughts... As Google has now started offering benchmarking analytics (see below), it seems as though they have placed some value on categorizing whole websites. Even though sites are being categorized via voluntary data sharing for analytical purposes only, do you think this could be a trend and that Google will place more importance on site categorization in the future as it relates to search relevancy?

Industry benchmarking is a commonly requested new service that enables customers to see how their site data compares to sites in any available industry vertical. We believe this data will provide actionable insights by providing context for users to understand how their site is doing. For example, if you have a travel website and you get a spike in traffic on Mondays, you may want to know whether other travel sites get that same spike on Mondays.