SEO - changing just the homepage look & feel

[lesliekirk]

While this does involve a Miva store it's more an SEO type question. This particular store has a static HTML page for the "homepage". The SEO "expert" wants to change the look and feel for just that page. It's a rather dramatic change from how the rest of the site/store looks. Am I being too "old school" worrying about the inconsistent transition in look & feel? As a consumer, I've been trained to look for inconsistencies in a website before I hand over my info. The domain name won't change, the page will be all https like the rest of the domain but will such a dramatic difference raise any concerns with the potential customer? The SEO "expert" has stated that if the look & feel is applied to the entire site the rankings will take a dive for a few weeks.

What say you?

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

Possibly, you need a new SEO expert....but it depends on what 'look and feel' mean. If, for example, <h1> will now be 2rems instead of 1.88, and red instead of black, than no, there is absolutely NO seo impact. However, IF say, you had <h1> then <p> Here's some appropriate text that talks about what's on the page, and its now <h1><img> <img> <p>stuff about the web site in general</p>, then yes, rankings could suffer. But, that's BAD SEO mark up to begin with. So, bottom line, if you are IMPROVING SEO, while maintaining the basic content of the page, changing its appearance has no Negative effect.

[lesliekirk]

Possibly, you need a new SEO expert....but it depends on what 'look and feel' mean. If, for example, <h1> will now be 2rems instead of 1.88, and red instead of black, than no, there is absolutely NO seo impact. However, IF say, you had <h1> then <p> Here's some appropriate text that talks about what's on the page, and its now <h1><img> <img> <p>stuff about the web site in general</p>, then yes, rankings could suffer. But, that's BAD SEO mark up to begin with. So, bottom line, if you are IMPROVING SEO, while maintaining the basic content of the page, changing its appearance has no Negative effect.

I'm referring to a completely different visual look & feel. Different colors, etc. Something that would be noticed when clicking from the "landing" page to the store pages. The "SEO" underpinnings have already been addressed. This is something very visual that he now wants to do.

In my mind, it's one of those "buyer beware" scenarios that we have been trying to teach millions of internet users to look for. You land on a page that looks all nice and pretty, then when you click a link from that slick pretty page you are taken to other pages that look very different (albeit still nice looking).

I guess if anything else it might be a good test to see if a dramatic difference in the look & feel has an impact on the customers. Again, I'm not talking about the search engines. The "expert" has done a very good job providing the tweaks they like. My primary concern is a home page that looks totally different from the rest of the website.

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

I was mostly responding to this statement:

"The SEO "expert" has stated that if the look & feel is applied to the entire site the rankings will take a dive for a few weeks."

As for the other points, you are correct. Changing the look and feel from page to page is a basic 'dumb move' that is sure to cause issues from confusion to, as you point out, lack of consumer confidence.

[oliverands]

This does seem like an odd recommendation. But, like Bruce says, it's hard to be able to say definitively without knowing more. What, exactly, is planned with this change? Remember that spiders don't "see" the page. They just index text and metadata. So changing fonts, colors, location of images on the page, etc. will have no impact at all on SEO. But if you are adding or changing text or markup or metadata on the page the result could be different. But I, like you, would worry about a different look and feel for the homepage and the rest of the site from a usability and user trust perspective.

[lesliekirk]

And Branding - that's the word I was looking for. The proposed home page mockup doesn't have the same branding as the rest of the site.