Yahoo! on the other hand, will index the page, however you may not see a change in their results for some time. This is because the engine updates less frequently than Google or MSN. Therefore when Yahoo! does update, your previously cached pages will likely drop and NOT be replaced until the NEXT index update. Your site could drop out of the Yahoo! index for a month or more.

So how to you minimize the impact?

First, and I can’t stress this enough, consult with your SEO/SEM consultant. If they tell you there won’t be an impact then find another firm, because I can tell you from experience that even the most minor cosmetic changes will impact your site.

As such you must prepare for an impact. because it’s no longer a matter of it may happen. However by following these simple steps you can minimize the impact.

Whenever possible, you should try and keep your old structure and naming conventions. This will help minimize the impact. Even if the page layout and look changes, if the crawlers can find the pages in the same location, this will make the re-indexing happen quicker, restoring the site to its previous rank sooner.

However, if you are doing a site wide reconstruction – that is new pages, new names, new folder structure. Be sure to keep the old site. Before you make any changes, you will want to check what rankings already exist and 301 those pages to the “new” pages. I say keep the old site because you can do this check and redirect on a page by page basis. If your pages are dynamic (PHP or ASP) you can insert redirect code on the pages. If the pages are static HTML you can use meta refresh code to redirect to the proper page.

Keep the old pages until you know they’ve been removed from the indexes of all the major engines, and then remove them. Be sure you have a custom 404 error page also in place in case some of these pages have been bookmarked, or otherwise referred to by visitors after they’ve been removed.

The alternative to keeping the entire site is to use software like a URL rewriter to perform the redirect. A URL rewriter intercepts page requests and forwards them to the “proper” page. While many people use re-writers to turn dynamic sites into static sites, they are also useful for these types of redirects.

Be sure to use services like the Google XML sitemap submission, or Yahoo’s bulk submit feature to resubmit your “new” site. While you can wait for the crawler to find all the new pages, it’s probably better to give them a little push in the right direction.

You should also know that if you are planning on adding a bunch of new content to existing sections of the site that new content will impact rankings. This is because the engines have to evaluate the new content to see what impact it has on the rest of the site in terms of link inheritance and overall contribution to the theme of the site or section. This will delay your site’s re-indexing.

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