How to edit old websites?

My father had launched a website few years ago. Now, I have taken over the business responsibility. And I have decided to change the outlook of the site. I think the design is very old, and the content needs modification. If I can update the website with the content, can anyone tell me whether my achieved page rank and traffic will drop or not. If not, then what is the process of editing the old website? In case, there are any online guides available, kindly share them with me. I am waiting for your comments. Thank you and regards!

The guys at Site Visibility did a podcast on that a few months ago: http://www.sitevisibility.co.uk/blog...st-episode-74/

In order to edit the old website, you need to have access to the files on the server and know what technologies are used. My guess is that if you edit the site the site will rise in page rank due to newer content, IF you use keywords and other SEO tactics.

If you would like some help with it you can put the web address here or PM it to me and I will try to look at the site and let you know what I think it will take to change it.

There is also the option that you can completely redo the site using the same URL. This would mean that you can still use the old links that are already on the internet but recreate the site in Wordpress, Drupal or another CMS to make it easier for editing. (Like editing posts on this site, not HTML files).

I hope this helps.

Just a thought, but if you are editing the old site, I would try and keep the same URL's for pages, as these will be well established in the search engines. If that is not possible, lok into 301 redirects.

I just went through a major changeover with one of my websites, it was an html website that I've had since 2001 and I switched everything over into Wordpress. I did see a drop in search engine rankings right away, but it started coming back up immediately.

You'll want to set up the 301 redirects for any URL changes and that should help point the search engines in the right direction and keep you from dipping down too long (my understanding anyway and exactly what I did)

I did a lot of reading up on the topic before I made my changes and read that many people achieved better and higher search engine rankings after all was said and done, which is what I'm hoping for of course.

Best of luck with your changes and improvements!