Complete relaunch and its effects

[sportsfreak]

Hi,

first of all I hope you guys will get my point, I know my English is not the best.

First things first, I wouldnt consider myself a newbie with SEO, I have been in the game for quite a long time now but its the first time this topic came up. I have had a website launched about a year ago on an old domain. This wasnt too much of a big project but I added content regularly for several months, like 3-5 articles a week. Its a sports betting site and then when I didnt even expect it, the picks I uploaded started ranking quite highly. I did not do any link building, just adding content on a regular basis as I said. So far so good. About 1.5 months ago I did a complete overhaul, I changed the whole Design (Theme), Layout, Structure, Permalink Structure, added like 100 pages of more quality content, started building links etc. but its like a brand new site compared with the "old" version. Thing is, I dont expect any wonders since all in all this project is still very young, but then the traffic has decreased enormously compared with the numbers I had BEFORE the relaunch. Stuff I knew I would rank for when I posted it back then, I am now on page 4 or 5 for example, sometimes 3.

My question is now, does anyone here have experience with stuff like that? Is it normal? Is Google like waiting to see if the "new way" lasts and will then present my websites content where it should be?

Thank you very much for your opinions!

[Scampi]

I think your problem may have arisen from changing the permalinks, I don't think anything else would have negatively affected your page ranking.

[sportsfreak]

That was my first thought as well... I wasnt aware this would have such a big effect when I redesigned the site. I hope Big G will realize though its just a change of structure and let me rank better again. I mean its not that I had massive links pointing to any pages before the changes that are now pointing nowhere you know.

[sportsfreak]

Anyone else who can give me some hope I have not destroyed my site for good. :/

[Scampi]

Are your old links going to 404 pages? If possible, re-direct them so GoogleBot can follow the link and not see it as a dead page. You can see your 404's/Not Founds in Webmaster Tools.