New website; will I lose seo rank?

Kent Brockman

I am about to go live with my new website.
It will obviously replace the old one and will use the existing hosting and url.
Will I retain my google ranking?

Is it important to use the same Homepage meta keywords and description as on old site?

I have added new products and want to change the description (but obviously not if it will cost me my rank)

Appreciate some informed opinions, thanks.

cormee

Google ignores meta keywords and descriptions (a good description will, however, increase CTR) so you don't need to worry about them.

Make sure all your old urls map to their new equivalents and any ones you're dropping, redirect 301 them to the site homepage. You can check all indexed urls by googling "site:yoursite.com"

Your new site will have a new layout, structure and code so it's very likely it will affect your rankings, whether it's negatively or positively is another question, if you improved your site's SEO it will most likely be positiovely (obviously).

The most important thing is you don't get freaked when you see fluctuations in your analytics, when compared to your old site. It's all too easy to say 'fu*k that' and revert to your old design - don't; give your site time to settle and after a month, or possibly two, you'll have a much better idea of how it affected it.

Kent Brockman

Interestingly we did the swap over earlier this evening, and it can take up to 24hrs to switch over (propegate ?)

Thanks to FB and google chat I now know that the new site is visible in Romania, Australia and London. But site is temporarily unavailable in california and I can still see the old on here in Ireland.

F5.....F5........F5..........F5........