When is it worth re-structuring your site?
-
I recently started working on a site that is 8 years old and the currently URLs/ site structure is not SEO friendly. We are concerned that in re-structuring the site, we may loose our rankings.
Has anyone ever completely re-structured their site? Was it worth it?
-
So, basically, we are thinking of putting all content related to one keyword in a subdirectory. Currently all content is in one main subdirectory. For example, url.com/un-related-subdirectory/tons of content to url.com/keyword/content-related-to-this-keyword.
-
If all you are doing is creating a different architecture without making significant changes to the actual content (so giving each existing page a more SEO friendly category +/or file name) then you just need to make sure that every individual page is correctly redirected to its new URL using 301's. External links will remain in play and search engines will eventually recognize the redirects and update their indexes.
As long as you build the new structure in parallel so that you never take a page out of circulation you should be good.
If, on the other hand, you plan on altering content, removing pages completely, or doing something that will make existing pages unavailable for any period of time, you are likely to see some impact on rankings that might not be ideal.
If your concern stems from the fact that you are maybe not sure whether the new structure will actually help, then you will want to start slowly as Nicholas suggested.
My approach would be to do exactly as Nicholas described, but to start with pages that are ranking poorly.
Happy 301'ing
-
I have a similar problem with a client of mine.
While I feel on paper, their on-site SEO is below par. They are consistently ranking #1 and #2 for their keywords.The one thing I have done was come up with a plan and structured it out in excel and word, just in case a large problem occurs.
The best solution would be to write out your proposed changes, and start small. If you start small and structure your plan in a timeline, you can re-structure the whole site over a long period of time without seeing any negative effects initially.
-
This can be a worth while venture, but only as a last resort.
In order to make a better informed response or suggestion, more information would be required of you......is the site for making $ or just for fun, how competive is the environment, would the capital time and investment work out if you sharpend a pencil to it.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Canonical tag on a large site
when would you reccomend using a canonical tag on a large site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cristiana.Solinas0 -
Only homepage is ranking after site re-launch
We've been moving all our sites over to a new platform (Demandware) this year. In the process, they've all gotten updated designs (from the same template), on-page optimizations, etc. Since they're all on the same platform and are essentially copies from one template, any technical issues found have been fixed across all sites. The problem I'm seeing is there are a few sites that haven't really seen much/any recovery from the site launch, and these are sites that were done 4-5 months ago. There's one in particular that's especially concerning, since it's showing issues that none of the other sites seem to have. In my Moz reports, it looks like of all the keywords that are ranking, they're only ranking the https version of the homepage (and from what I'm seeing, the https version wasn't picked up and ranked until the beginning of October, which was also the time that WMT shows a huge drop in clicks and impressions). I've crawled the site (ScreamingFrog), done a site search in Google (all pages look to be indexed), etc. and I haven't come across any specific problems there that would suggest a technical issue. We're wondering if it might be a link authority problem, since this site had the most dramatic change in navigation. The navigation used to be product based (Boots, Shoes, etc.) and is now broken up by gender. I've noticed that a few other pages that are ranking are dual gender pages that also existed on the old site, whereas all of these new categories aren't ranking at all and I'm not seeing this happen with any of our other sites. I've gone down a bunch of different paths trying to figure this out, but I haven't come up with any concrete answers as to why this is happening and how to fix it. Any thoughts as to what else I can look into or try for this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WWWSEO0 -
Links to my site still showing in Webmaster Tools from a non-existent site
We owned 2 sites, with the pages on Site A all linking over to similar pages on Site B. We wanted to remove the links from Site A to Site B, so we redirected all the links on Site A to the homepage on Site A, and took Site A down completely. Unfortunately we are still seeing the links from Site A coming through on Google Webmaster Tools for Site B. Does anybody know what else we can do to remove these links?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pedstores0 -
On 1 of our sites we have our Company name in the H1 on our other site we have the page title in our H1 - does anyone have any advise about the best information to have in the H1, H2 and Page Tile
We have 2 sites that have been set up slightly differently. On 1 site we have the Company name in the H1 and the product name in the page title and H2. On the other site we have the Product name in the H1 and no H2. Does anyone have any advise about the best information to have in the H1 and H2
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CostumeD0 -
Is my site being penalized?
I've gone through all the points on https://mza.bundledseo.com/blog/technical-site-audit-for-2015 but the site only ranks for its brand name after months. The website is not ranking in the top 100 for any main keywords (2,3,4 word phrases), only for a handful of very long phrases (4+). All of the content is unique, all pages are indexed, the website is fast and doesn't contain any crawl errors and there are a couple of links pointing to it. There is a sitewide follow link in the footer pointing to another domain, its parent company and vice-versa. This is not done for any SEO reasons but the companies are related and also the products are supplementary of each other. Could this be an issue? Or is my site being penalized by something else?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Robbern0 -
Recommended URL Structure
Hello, We are currently adding a new section of content on our site related to Marketing and more specifically 'Digital Marketing' (research reports, trend studies, etc). Over time (several months, or 1-3 years) we will add more 'general' marketing content. My question is which of the following URL structures makes more sense from an SEO perspective (and how best to quantify the benefit of one over another): www.mysite.com/marketing/digital/research/... www.mysite.com/digital-marketing/research/.. Thanks, Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mike-gart0 -
Do follow or no follow on wordpress site?
I have read many different opinions on what links to make do follow on a wordpress website versus which ones to leave as no follow. (internal and external) There does not seem to be any consensus among the inputs to date. Any perspectives on this would be appreciated. thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | casper4340 -
Any SEO suggestions for my site?
Site in question: http://bit.ly/Lcspfp Does anyone have any suggestions for any on-site SEO that would benefit my website? Any recommendations, big or small are appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RichardTaylor1