Advice Please-New Website and Google Rankings

[flashtoby]

I am considering purchasing a new site and would be interested to know how that will affect my google rankings.

At present i am doing well in the rankings, the new site would be with a new web host but the same domain name, it will also be flash as apposed to html, would this mean I will drop off the rankings and have to work my way back up again.

Thanks Andy

[flashtoby]

No advice from anyone ?

[DMax82]

Check the SEO sticky at the top of the page.

[tim]

Flash is bad, m'kay? Depends how it's set up though, it can be done.

[jasonlitka]

Changing hosts will not make a difference as long as the domain name is the same. Switching to a flash-only site, on the other hand, is a huge no-no (spiders don't see flash), as would be a redesign that changes the URLs already indexed (using 301 redirects from old pages to the new ones will EVENTUALLY transfer the old PR to the new links but in the short term you'll be left with PR of N/A or 0 on all your pages).

If you're going to do a redesign then ideally you'd want to do the entire layout via CSS and use HTML tags for markup only, that way the majority of the data downloaded by spiders is actual content. Oh, and make sure that your menu appears below your content when viewing the source (regardless of where it appears when rendered), otherwise it may be interpreted as being more important than the actual content.

[flashtoby]

Thanks for the advice, im not a designer myself and would be using a template.

As it looks with my very limited knowledge about this subject that I will end up losing my position on google, I am probably going to have to stick with html as I don't see the point of having a flashy site that know one will see.

Cheers Andy

[Uhland]

Changing hosts will not make a difference as long as the domain name is the same. Switching to a flash-only site, on the other hand, is a huge no-no (spiders don't see flash), as would be a redesign that changes the URLs already indexed (using 301 redirects from old pages to the new ones will EVENTUALLY transfer the old PR to the new links but in the short term you'll be left with PR of N/A or 0 on all your pages).

If you're going to do a redesign then ideally you'd want to do the entire layout via CSS and use HTML tags for markup only, that way the majority of the data downloaded by spiders is actual content. Oh, and make sure that your menu appears below your content when viewing the source (regardless of where it appears when rendered), otherwise it may be interpreted as being more important than the actual content.


:shock:

is this a photo site or webmasters site?

[jasonlitka]

:shock:

is this a photo site or webmasters site?

The OP expressed an interest in protecting his PR and rankings on the SERPs. There's no reason why I can't share my knowledge with people here.

If I competed with any of you (I'm not a photographer, at least not a professional one) then it would be a different story...