Rewriting a Page Without Losing What It Already Ranks For

The rewrite that undid a year of work

The most painful search result is not a page that never ranked. It is a page that ranked, was rewritten to rank better, and stopped. It happens because a rewrite changes the two things a ranking rests on - the words the page matches and the structure search engines already understood - and owners change them without noticing.

Know what you are keeping

Before touching anything, record what the page currently ranks for. Not the phrase you intended; the phrases it actually appears for. Sort by impressions and write down the top ten. Those ten are the ground you must not lose, and half of them will be phrases you never thought about.

Then decide, per phrase, whether you are keeping it. A rewrite should keep most of them and improve a few. A rewrite that keeps none is not a rewrite; it is a new page, and the old one should be redirected to it rather than overwritten.

Change the body, keep the spine

The parts of a page that carry a ranking are more stable than the prose:

• The URL. Change it and you start again, even with a redirect, because the

redirect passes most of the signal but not all of it and takes time to settle.

• The title. Change it and you change what the page matches. If you must, change

it toward the phrase, not away from it.

• The main heading and the first paragraph. These carry the clearest statement

of what the page is about.

The body beneath can be rewritten freely. That is where the improvement lives. Rewrite the middle, refine the edges.

Add, do not replace

The safest rewrite is additive. Keep the section that already answers the phrase it ranks for, and add the sections that answer the questions it does not. A page that ranked for how to change a domain's nameservers should keep that instruction verbatim and grow around it, not be replaced by a general piece on domain management that no longer contains the exact answer.

When to leave it alone

If a page ranks in the top three for a phrase that brings you the right visitors, the honest advice is to stop. Improve something else. The temptation to polish a winner is strong and it is how winners are lost.

Change the page that sits at position eleven. Leave the page at position two alone, and spend the energy on a page that needs it.