I am developing a new website for our Historical Society. There has been a 'flat page' design at the URL for the past 4 or 5 years. Obviously all the search engines have cataloged this content and provide guidance to the site.

My question is what impact will there be to the existing "position" in search engines when I replace the old site with the new code. The URL will not change, only the page(s) content. There is some concern this change will "loose our standing" in the search engine results when the new site is deployed.

Here's the old site: http://www.chisagocountyhistory.org/


Here's the new site (at a temporary address): http://www.chisagocountyhistory.org/CCHS-Site/

Your new site has less code errors than your old site so that will help to lift your ranking a bit...

Google and his friends like sites to be updated often - it raises your ranking to have an active site rather than lowers it....

The only way your ranking will slip backward is if you do a bad job of getting relevant keywords in both the meta tags and the page content - or you present bad code...

Remember to resubmit the site to google and co so that they know to come pick up the new pages....

Adding a sitemap to the site and submitting that to google too will add a point on your ranking too

The idea of losing your rank with google is related to moving domains. So as long as you keep the same domain you will not lose your page rank. also, I echo what fe said. She is spot on.

I don't think that page ranking has a lot to do with ranking in search engines. I read recently that Google's page rank calculation is either broken or changed in the last few months. Your search engine ranking is now based more on content than before. I am not sure I would worry about page ranking, but do concentrate on optimizing your page so that the search engines display it at the top end of the results. To me it looks like page ranking is now based more on traffic and links to your site.

While we are on this topic, I must close off with my big mantra: I hope that no one here is paying some outfit $49, $99 or $149 for automatic submissions to 1000 search engines for a year or whatever. You only need to get listed in Ask, Google and Yahoo. Maybe Bing, if they ever figure out what they are doing. Maybe a manual submission to DMOZ.org and see if they will list you.

Regards
Raj

Although, I agree with the bottom half of your statement regarding paying for a thousand search engines, I must disagree with you regarding page rank. First, page rank is not "broken". Second, page rank is an algorithm that gives weight to a specific page based upon its relative importance (this includes "use", but is not exclusive). For example, both Coffee Cup and Amazon.com have a page rank of 9. There is no way that Coffee Cup receives as many visitors as Amazon.com. The reason CC is ranked so high is because of their overall impressive web development. In other words, they know what they are doing.

I hope this clarifies.

Thanks everyone for the feedback. In my desire to get a better understanding how the Page Ranking system works, I found the following statement on the Wikipedia entry about this topic...

Removal from Google Webmaster Tools

On October 14, 2009, Google employee Susan Moskwa confirmed that the company had removed PageRank from its Webmaster Tools section. Her post said in part, "We’ve been telling people for a long time that they shouldn’t focus on PageRank so much; many site owners seem to think it's the most important metric for them to track, which is simply not true." [31]

Maybe this is the source where the idea that "it's broken" came from?

I have a follow-up question now that I've gone this far... If the Page Rank is not the most important metric, what metrics ARE important to moving your URL higher in the list of responses to a Google query, for example...

If I search for "county historical society", Google displays many many pages of these websites. My question is "what moves OUR county historical society higher in this list of non-specific societies"? It must be something in addition to Page Rank?

Being somewhat sarcastic and some not, i thought Google determined how 'high' on the page you were listed was based on what you paid them for thier Ad Words or other fees.... I might be wrong here but thats the impression I was given by an SEO

Yes, you are correct. What you are referring to is called "indexing". Here are the keys to effective SEO.

1. Make sure you use html links instead of Javascript or flash. This allows Google-bot to index your site. Google-bot cannot read Javascript or flash.

2. Make sure your meta tag information is clear, concise, and does not exceed the 23 word limit. Also, make sure you meta tag information differs from page to page. In writing your key words, make sure you research this part well. You should repeat key words in your meta tag information 2-3 times, but no more than 3 times, as Google-bot will de-rank you.

3. You want the content of your site to be key word friendly. For example, instead of saying:

"We provide SEO services for your company"

You would want to say

"(Your Company Name Here) provides SEO services for your company".

In doing this Google bot is seeing a key word resemblance between your company name and what is listed in your meta tag information. Therefore, it concludes that the information is relevant. This process is called "Key Word Density".

4. Make sure you do not have any broken links. Also, don't use under construction pages.

5. Include a sitemap, and make sure all of the links are viable. This is the quickest and easiest way to get google bot to fly through your site and begin indexing.

6. Don't be afraid to use some keywords in your title tags. And make your title tags relevant to the information on the page. For example, instead of just doing:

"Innovate Web Development and Consulting"

It should instead look like this:

"Innovate Web Developing and Consulting | Web Design, Consulting, and Ecommerce"

Or something like that. Then you switch your key word portion relative to the page you are on.

7. Visitation: You have to get people to your site. This is huge for your movement up on search engines. It also takes time. Your not going to the top of Google in a month. In fact, it could take years depending on how popular your site is. At the very least your goal should be when you type you company name into google it pops up on the first page. That should be your first tangible goal.

8. Google Webmaster Tools: You must use these tools. Google gives you great analytics that can help you refine your site.

9. Finally, make sure your site is optimized. Make sure the code is elegant and clean. The speed of your site is also important. If it takes a long time to load that is no good. So make sure your site is optimized.

There you all go. Free SEO information for my friends at CC.

This list is not exclusive. SEO is very complicated and there are many factors that go into the art. However, this is a good list to get you started.

Enjoy.

Is it a word limit or a character limit? Hmm...

It is a word limit, because Google can only display 23 words in their website descriptions.