our site was recently doing very well, however recently it has dropped out of the serps almost completely, with all pages except the home page losing all page rank.

The only change I can see is that out designer has changed the file extensions from .htm to .php.

Could this be it?

Please take a look at www.premiumiv.com

Thanks

That's probably a factor. Changing file extensions will change the pages in some form or fashion. bob.htm is not the same as bob.php, for example.

Your designer should 301 the old pages to their corresponding new ones. You won't see any immediate PageRank increase, because it's an inaccurate measure and updated infrequently, but you should over time see it increase and, assuming you've made no other significant changes, you should see things return to relative normalcy.

HOWEVER...and this is a big one:

http://www.premiumiv.com/links.php

It says you don't participate in reciprocal links, yet there are some links in there that are very unlikely to be anything else. Get rid of all the ones that don't relate directly to the tourism industry and/or St. Barts and keep the ones that are relevant. Link exchanges are one of those things that will eventually lead you down the highway to Hell, if you're not there already.

(While you're at it, tell your designer to remove the cheap credit link at the bottom left corner. This is just tacky.)

There are probably other things, but these are the two on the surface that really stand out to me.

Google Webmaster Tools can also tell you about 404's and other errors

www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

-Mike

I agree with everything Adam said with one exception. I think it's ok for a designer to leave their credit as long as it's ok with you. Of course I am part web designer and ask my client's if it's ok to leave that same kind of link. To me it's no different than a company making a shirt with their logo on it.

But for the rest do exactly what Adam suggested. Get rid of the links page completely. It's not helping and is likely hurting. Also use 301 redirects from the old .htm versions of the page to the new .php versions of the page. If you and your designer don't know how come back and we can point you in the right direction. It's not too hard.

Search engines see index.htm and index.php as two completely different pages and so they come and look for the .htm version find it's no longer there and see no need to display it in search results. Eventually they'll find the .php versions of the pages, but you want to set up the 301s so the value from any links pointing to the old .htm versions will pass to the new pages.

Thanks for all of your replies.

Quick question. Why would our web guy have changed from .htm to .php?

Just so I know a bit next time I speak to him.

Thanks

Because PHP is what's called a server-side programming language, and the output is HTML (which is also the output of the .htm pages). However, a server-side programming language offers an extension to HTML by allowing for things such as forms (contact forms for example), drawing information from a database, etc. You can do a lot more with PHP than you can with plain HTML.

So from a purely technical standpoint, it's a smart move (and considering I don't know PHP, that's a very bold statement for me personally to make). However, as with any change there are adjustments to be made (e.g. SEO adjustments). Your designer simply didn't think of all of them. I'm not ragging on your designer when I say that, because it's almost impossible to do; but that's what happened in your situation.

Thanks Adam

It makes sense, we are putting several forms onto the site.

How long before Google picks up on the renamed pages?

We used to come up around 15 on our chosen key-phrase "st barts" and pretty much number 1 on "St Barts+<anything relevant>"

Am I correct in understanding, that according to Google, our site has shrunk from several hundred pages to one?

How long before Google picks up on the renamed pages?

It will "pick them up" next time your site is crawled, however regaining SERPs and traffic is a different thing entirely.

If you put permanent redirects in place from "old" url to "new" url somewhere between 8 weeks to 5/6 months before your SERP positions return

Without redirects, it is a piece of string question.