Hi Guyz, I have a wordpress site (twenty eleven theme) that is ranking for some of its keywords. I am thinking of changing its static home page (either editing the current one or replacing it with a new static one) so as to increase conversions. My questions are: Will doing either of these 2 things affect rankings? Does it matter (as far as SEO is concerned) if the home page has a lot of content or very little? Kindly advise on any other factor I might consider when doing this Thanks a ton!!
It all depends. Which page is actually ranking? the inner pages or the static home page? If the static home page is the one that is ranking then yes it is likely changing that page may affect your rankings (especially if the content on that page is what was bringing people to you in the first place). If it was an inner page that is not your static page then there will be no issue in terms of SEO i would believe.
You may want to try some A/B testing and monitor the results in analytics. You can either use a plugin or code to perform it, or you can do it the guerrilla way (simply change your site for a while and see how it impacts conversion). Good luck!
I change from a static home page to a blog style on some of my sites from time to time. It's a bumpy few weeks, but the site normally recovers pretty well once it's left alone for a bit. If you are totally repurposing the site. Changing niche completely - then that might be a different story. But within a niche I've not found this to be too much of a problem as long as you have just a little patience. Scritty
Thanks for all your replies. I decided to edit the current homepage and have finally made all the revisions I wanted. Woke up today and after checking my rankings I almost passed out. Even the keywords that weren't in the top 100 are now appearing in the top 50. Will see how it goes when the google dance ends.
