Best method to update navigation structure
-
Hey guys,
We're doing a total revamp of our site and will be completely changing our navigation structure. Similar pages will exist on the new site, but the URLs will be totally changed. Most incoming links just point to our root domain, so I'm not worried about those, but the rest of the site does concern me.
I am setting up 1:1 301 redirects for the new navigation structure to handle getting incoming links where they need to go, but what I'm wondering is what is the best way to make sure the SERPs are updated quickly without trashing my domain quality, and ensuring my page and domain authority are maintained.
The old links won't be anywhere on the new site. We're swapping the DNS record to the new site so the only way for the old URLs to be hit will be incoming links from other sites.
I was thinking about creating a sitemap with the old URLs listed and leaving that active for a few weeks, then swapping it out for an updated one. Currently we don't have one (kind of starting from the bottom with SEO)
Also, we could use the old URLs for a few weeks on the new site to ensure they all get updated as well. It'd be a bit of work, but may be worth it.
I read this article and most of that seems to be covered, but just wanted to get the opinions of those who may have done this before. It's a pretty big deal for us.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/uncrawled-301s-a-quick-fix-for-when-relaunches-go-too-well
Am I getting into trouble if I do any of the above, or is this the way to go?
PS: I should also add that we are not changing our domain. The site will remain on the same domain. Just with a completely new navigation structure.
-
It all depends on what you're trying to achieve. If you want people to see a 404 page then serve them a useful 404 page.
If you're trying to redirect link value then you should 301 to the most relevant page to what that URL used to have on it.
For me a 404 error is a great opportunity to catch the visitor and give them something of use.
If you redirect 404s you'll also reduce your site's general server errors, which can only be a positive thing, right?
-
Thanks for the RE.
About redirecting pages that don't exist anymore, I thought of doing that, however isn't that what the 404 page is for? I was going to redirect all other pages to the root, but that would likely mean we'd never get a 404 response.
Maybe I'm not understanding the programming logic involved in something like that.
-
We changed our domain a few months back so here's a few observations
- Where possible ensure effective 301's are in place
- If a page URL does not have to change don't change it. It is possible to create a better website structure/navigation without altering URLs.
- Ensure a full sitemap is submitted when you roll out the new design
- Be patient, you may see a drop for a short while, as the 301's take time to attribute value from old->new URLs.
- Get any sites linking to old URLs (the non-home ones) updated to the new URLs when you know them.
- In a few months, if you have any old URLs in Google (do a site:www.website.com) search then use the URL removal tool in GWT to get rid of old URLs.
- You may want to consider redirecting any pages that don't exist at all any more, to your home page or the next nearest match in terms of content.
Hope this helps to get you started!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Website structure - best tools to analyse and plan, visually
Hi - I am about to analyse and then re-plan the structure of a website and think it would be best to do it graphically - in the form of a chart. Are there any tools you would recommend to visualise the structure of an existing website (perhaps something that can scan and then represent a websites) - or plan out a new/revised website? Thanks in advance, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
URL Structure For E-commerce Sites
Hi Guys, I was wondering what would be the optimal and best URL structure for sub-categories on a E-commerce site for SEO purposes. Example if my category was dresses and I had multiple sub-categories within dresses would 1 or 2 below be the better URL structure? 1) Domain + Category + Sub-Category be the most suitable URL structure: Sleeveless Dresses URL: clothingstore.com/dresses/sleeveless-dresses Midi Dresses URL: clothingstore.com/dresses/midi-dresses 2) OR would excluding the category be better Domain + Sub-Category like: Sleeveless Dresses URL: clothingstore.com/sleeveless-dresses Midi Dresses URL: clothingstore.com/midi-dresses Do you think it makes much of a difference, is shorter better and more effective in this case? E.g. Rand discuses in this article: https://mza.seotoolninja.com/blog/15-seo-best-practices-for-structuring-urls that having the keyword in the URL serves as anchor text, so wouldn't having additional keywords dilute value in this case? Plus he mentions shorter URLs the better. Cheers, Chris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jayoliverwright1 -
Best practice for H1 on site without H1 - Alternative methods?
I have recently set up a mens style blog - the site is made up of articles pulled in from a CMS and I am wanting to keep the design as clean as possible - so no text other than the articles. This makes it hard to get a H1 tag into the page - are there any solutions/alternatives? that would be good for SEO? The site is http://www.iamtheconnoisseur.com/ Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SWD.Advertising0 -
I'm updating content that is out of date. What is the best way to handle if I want to keep old content as well?
So here is the situation. I'm working on a site that offers "Best Of" Top 10 list type content. They have a list that ranks very well but is out of date. They'd like to create a new list for 2014, but have the old list exist. Ideally the new list would replace the old list in search results. Here's what I'm thinking, but let me know if you think theres a better way to handle this: Put a "View New List" banner on the old page Make sure all internal links point to the new page Rel=canonical tag on the old list pointing to the new list Does this seem like a reasonable way to handle this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jim_shook0 -
How Should We Best List Events Pages?
Hi everyone! Luke here from CHARGED.fm hoping that a brilliant mind could help me with another annoying (at least for me) technical seo question. It's about how we list the events on our ticketing site. Here's the rundown: We currently list tickets by event id, but our competitors keep the event page in the same silo and use the venue name and date of event in the url. So we do this: http://www.charged.fm/kinky-boots-tickets (disregard redirect for now) List the events where you can choose from these: http://www.charged.fm/event/tickets/2518362/kinky-boots
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | keL.A.xT.o
http://www.charged.fm/event/tickets/2511448/kinky-boots Moz lists these as duplicate content, so we're wondering how to resolve this. We're also wondering if it would be benficial to keep the events page in the same silo like our competitors: http://www.vividseats.com/theatre/kinky-boots-tickets/kinky-boots-9-20-1537274.html (notice how they go /theatre/kinky-boots-tickets/event/) Would it be beneficial to list like this? Is it inconsequential? Could we leave things the way that they are or should we at least add the venue and date to the events page URL? Thanks a lot for any help,
Luke0 -
Webmaster Tools says that Structured Data is missing (author and updated)
Hi, Google Webmaster Tools tells me, that every blog category and blog post is missing: 'updated' 'author' I find this data under 'Structured Data' => The datatype is 'hentry'. Markup is microformats.org. Is this a problem for SEO? How can I fix this? Best, Robin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | soralsokal0 -
Url structure of a blog
We are trying to work out what the best structure for our blog is as we want each page to rank as highly as possible, we were looking at a flat structure similar to http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/ where every posts is after the blog/ but not in category's although the viewers can look in different category's from the top buttons on the page- photoshop - icons etc or we where going to go for the structured way- blog/photoshop/blog-post.html the only problem is that we will end up 4 deep at least with this and at least 80 characters in the url. any help would be appreciated. Thanks Shaun
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
What About Google Panda Update 22?
Maybe I haven't found the threads or whatever but I haven't seen lots of posts about the latest Google Panda update from November 21-22 on SEOmoz. Panda 22 is not even listed here: http://www.seomoz.org/google-algorithm-change Until November 21st, Google killed 3 of 5 websites I own through their Panda updates (never got hit by Penguin updates as I got only original content), accounting for about 25% of my income. Fortunately, the 2 remaining websites gained more traffic throughout the summer of 2012 so my income almost got back to 100% even though I got the "Unnatural Links" warning in Google Webmaster Tools in July. Since then, I did a huge link cleanup and according to the Link Detox Tool (from another SEO service), the number of "toxic links" went from about 350 to 50. Back link reports is as follow: 8% (52) Toxic Links; 57% (382) Suspicious Links; 35% (235) Healthy Links; Out of the 382 suspicious, most of them are coming from the same domain and they are all directories to which my website has been submitted automatically (not using any specific keyword anchor). On the opposite, healthy links are coming from different domains so I like to think they have a stronger impact than suspicious links. That said, my two remaining websites were still doing well until November 21 where it got hit by the Panda. Now traffic has dropped by 55% and income has dropped by 75% (yes I'll have to look for a job within a year if I don't fix this). (I want to add that none of my websites are "thin websites". One has over 1500 pages of content and the other has about 500 pages. All websites have content added 3 to 5 times a week.) What I don't get is that all my "money keywords" are still ranked in the top 10 results on Google according to multiple tools / services I use, yet the impressions dropped from 50% to 75% for those keywords?!? I have a feeling that this time it's not only a drop in ranking. There's a drop in impressions caused by something else. Is it caused by emphasis on local search? Are they showing more ads and less organic results? But here's the "funny part": For the last 5 years, I was never able to advertise my website on Google Adwords. Each time, I got a quality score of about 4/10 only to see it drop to 1/10 within a few hours of launching the campaign. On November 22nd, I build new PPC campaigns based on the exact same PPC campaigns I had the past (same keywords, same ads, same landing pages). Guess what? Now the quality score is between 7/10 and 10/10 (most of them have 10/10) for the exact same PPC campaign! What a "coincidence" huh?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sbrault740