Will moving or changing my site hurt my SEO rankings? Well this is a heated question. With many things with SEO things can get complicated. If you are changing your content, keyword usage and incoming links, yes these will affect your SEO rankings. There are also a few more questions you will need to ask yourself.

Are you changing your domain name?

If you are Google has already indexed your current domain. This is a risk you need to be willing to make. If you follow the proper steps you will get your ranking back no problem. Make sure to use Google Webmaster Tools to re-index your site once you have changed your domain name. 301 directs are a perfect way to do this. Make sure you are making the change that better reflects your brand. Once this is complete, check to see that the pages on your new site are appearing in Google’s search results.

Are you changing your content management systems? Are you changing your design?

You need to make sure that you are keeping track of all of your current URLs before the redesign. 301 redirects can be implemented here again. You may also need to create custom 404 error pages to help until your new site has been indexed. From here you need to make sure that you are monitoring your web analytics for any broken links so they can be fixed.
Make sure that you are also doing on page optimization. Make sure you include individual page titles, page descriptions and any keywords that can help Google determine what content is actually on your page.

Are you changing your web hosting?

This is a little more simple, especially if you have a smaller site (Under 1,000 pages). All you need to do is make DNS changes to point the domain name to the new hosting location and ensuring search engines are properly crawling the web site at its new location. Once this has been completed and it is affect, then you could close down the old hosting location.
These are some simple tips to help you get your site back up in rankings. Especially if some of these changes are necessary to further develop and improve your website.

If you have any questions or concerns when it comes to moving or re-designing your website please feel free to reach out to our team at 780-903-1017