Maintaining Google Ranking when Upgrading to 3.x

[Otourist]

I have some good Google rankings for some of my main search terms on my current website which is running on Joomla 2.5. For example "pay as you go employment advice" returns the site at position 1 after the ads.

I'm in the process of upgrading the site to Joomla 3.6. I'm kind of working from scratch as I want to change some of the extensions and menu options as well as freshen up the content.

The current site is http://hrchampions.co.uk/ and I will be keeping the same domain and can keep the old site live in a subdomain or hidden folder.

What do I need to do to maintain my Google rankings? How will Google react to the new site and content and are there any tricks I can use? Will redirecting pages from the old site adversely affect the performance of the new site?


Any ideas and suggestions gratefully received.

[tr1]

If it's of any use, I've previously migrated a site with a few hundred pages for a friend to a new URL. I did 301 redirects for each page individually and I didn't see a drop in rankings despite the brand new domain name.

Changing the content (or even tweaking it) can go either way. Personally, I'd leave the content the same during the process and see if Google rankings change.

Changing the template can also make a difference in my experience. I'd also pay attention to Google's Pagespeed test before and after the switchover.

[misholini]

Hi, I know it's an old post but relevant to me, so will be delighted to get your thoughts. I completely refurbished my website and changed domain, 301 redirects were implemented and new urls took over the old ones smoothly in the SERPs. As my content and urls structure changed my rankings dropped but tiny bit and I am happy enough. After 9 months of the implementation if I search Google with site:MyOldWebsite.com, all old Urls are still present in Google search index (with updated/current titles and descriptions).In the new Google Search Console I can only see 1 valid indexed url from my old website, which is the sitemap. This is a bit confusing as old urls still appear in the Google search.
My old website is hosted in a separate hosting account and redirected from there. My question is how long do i need to keep the old website and hosting and can I re-locate my old domain to the new hosting account. If I do relocate the old domain, do I need to relocate the entire structure of my old webiste?