Website Building Software > WYSIWYG Web Builder
Search Engine Placement
Newberger:
I have been using CSB - and before that, Trellix. I am currently listed at the top of Google and Yahoo search engines for "church conflict" and related terms.
My question / concern is, if I switch to a different web program such as WYSIWYG, will that, can that, effect how my page is read by the various search engines and then change, lower my position?
Thanks.
Ken N. :boogie:
SafariWoman:
Hi, Well it takes a while for changes depending on when the robots crawl your site but yes it COULD affect your rankings. One trick I use is in a remake is to leave all of my old pages up a while and rename the new design pages so they have a different address. This works really well if all of your links to your homepage in the original file have been added as a html link and not a select page link. By doing this people still looking for the old pages find them and can eventually nav back to the index of the new site. The rankings on the old pages remain the same.
It depends on the site I guess if you would want to do this. I think for an informational site vs a commercial site it works the best. Those are what I have done this on before. A commercial site might not want customers finding dual and or conflicting content pages. Informational sites don't seem to be affected as much because the contents are not critical to a legally binding agreement such as making a purchase. I usually put a notice on the index that the site is new and that visitors might have found their way from an old page still published so they don't lose confidence or become confused with the site. Basically if a person enters through an old page other than the index all of the links continue to work as usual until they hit index. So some may visit and never even know there is an updated version unless you post on each page a notice that the person is visiting an older version of the site and to please navigate to the index page to visit the new site.
It works for me so I don't get a ton of Page Not Found hits after a change and it keeps the rankings up. I have left up old sites for as long as six months without it affecting anything on informational sites.
Ed:
I thought that using a particular web program should not make a difference and I agree with Wanda as time will tell if there is a difference. However, about a year ago, I converted a CSB web site to Frontpage using the same URL's and the Google page rank plummeted even though content, keywords, meta tags etc. were almost the same. On some pages, Frontpage added about 30% (roughly) more code. For small pages this is not a lot but for pages of say 200k up 30% makes a huge difference to size. So although content is king, design and the way programs generate code must affect ranking.
Samrc:
Search engines look for changes, for modifications to the site and though the creation software shouldn't impact the overall site score, it can. Some software makes it far more difficult for the search engine to move around. Obfuscating and encrypting pages, bloated code (Frontpage) and poor construction can cause havoc with rankings. CSB as old as it is, is still liked by the search engines.
Important for websites that people forget about when they update their site:
- consistency - if you replace a page, keep the same name
- redirects - if you have to replace or rename a page or split to a subdirectory, use a permanent REDIRECT to keep the links from going dead cutting off your website from other sites.
- change (new information)
- proper coding - scripts work, no hidden characters
- no dead links
- spider ability to walk through from page to page
- meta tags and key words should be reviewed and updated
- robots.txt file should be reviewed and updated.
Ed:
Excellent points. Thanks Samantha. There is just one I did not understand:
--- Quote ---spider ability to walk through from page to page
--- End quote ---
Is there a way to determine if my pages are spider walkable?
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