Update URL structure for SEO?

[DigitalPrescott]

Hi all,

We're redesigning our Web site, and the current URL structure uses overly simple URLs that do not reflect the navigation structure. This came about from using a dynamic system that only identifies an article by a number string at the end; the readable words do not play a role for the backend. (I am puzzled by this myself.) For reference, the site is about 2 years old.

Question:
Looking long-term, would it be best to adjust the structure now to reflect the nav with good keywords and place redirects? Or would such a wholesale move be fatal to traffic? Right now, Google is the primary traffic source.

Example:
CURRENT: our-domain.com/carbrand-model-trim/123456
SUGGESTED: our-domain.com/car-review/carbrand-model-trim/123456

Thanks for the guidance!

[SEFL]

The answer to your question lies in the answer to another question: "is the current URL structure working for you?"

If it's not working for you, then you really don't have anything to lose by giving a revised URL structure a whirl (as long as you remember to 301 and make sure users get to the updated pages and all that good stuff yadda yadda yadda).

If it's working for you, don't screw with it.

Personally, I'd lean toward the latter simply because you're making your URLs longer, and that's generally not a good idea since people do actually type things like that in (or C&P them) and sometimes longer URLs get truncated in emails and on badly coded forums and stuff. In other words, you might lose a percentage of your non-SE traffic if you do.

[WebSavvy]

I moved my entire directory structure and changed the URL format, last year.
It used to be like this:

domain.tld/Arts-and-Humanities/
domain.tld/Arts-and-Humanities/Art/

and went to this:

domain.tld/directory/arts.humanities.htm
domain.tld/directory/arts.humanities/art.htm

Over 50,000 pages were moved and 301s were used. It still took Google almost a year to catch up to everything, and even though it was the same pages moved to a new location -- many of the pages were still treated as "new"

Think about why you want to restructure. If it's not necessary, don't.
In my case, I did it because our URLs were mixed Upper/Lower case. I wanted all lowercase letters for purposes of web accessibility.

I removed all dashes from the URLs and just used periods for uniformity because it makes the URL easier for a person with motor difficulties.

I moved it to a subfolder /directory/
because we have other sections going in that would have shared some of the same file names as categories in the directory, so it really needed its own home.

Having said that, if you're still going to do it -- prepare everything well in advance, and move it in stages (if possible).

[DigitalPrescott]

Thanks for the lightning-quick replies.

The "is it working" is a tough question. We have experienced a steady increase in traffic since launch, though of course would like to see this continue and even accelerate. Like many niches, we are playing in a segment with many giant, deep-pocketed sites. Making smart SEO moves is probably the minimum just to maintain parity.

Key to this discussion: is the "suggested" structure in fact better?

Regarding URL length, we are not looking to go long. Really just want to insert the associated navigation category within the structure.

301'ing is an interesting issue, given that the pages are delivered based on the number code. I can call up a live page and insert any fake directory and it will still load the same story. It would seem a 301 in this case would be strictly for the SE's just to show these are not new pages. Users would have no issue returning from a bookmark.

@WebSavvy: Did you see a marked decrease in page views during the year it took Google to catch up?

Thanks!

[WebSavvy]

Well, I can't actually answer that question -- because of the timing involved. We had about 1000+ sites in our index that had become bad neighborhoods and the site was having problems stemming from that.

In fact, I thought it was the restructure that caused the issue, until I learned we had sites in the index that had become bad and that's what was causing the problems.

Our traffic didn't decrease, no. It actually went up -- but the SEs are not my main source of traffic. My site is 8 years old so we have other traffic sources built up from years and years ago.

The directory has had all of those bad sites removed from the index and we're no longer having any google issues as a result of this.

Traffic from google has increased as has rankings for different terms but I suspect that is a direct result of changing the structure itself, adding better metas to the pages because we're aiming for an overall 100% web accessible site.

The directory is table-less, CSS controlled, uses XHTML and is valid on all fronts. So, if faced with this all over again knowing the outcome beforehand, I'd still do it anyway.

<soapbox>
Even if the pages never bounced back in google I'd have been fine with that. I did it so people with disabilities could use the site. All "information" sites (like libraries) should be accessible to everyone.
</end soapbox>

[DigitalPrescott]

Can't imagine how you would weed out the bad sites, and prevent new "bad" entries in the future.... Definitely sounds like a good move for your goals.

[WebSavvy]

Most of the "bad sites" were indexed back in 2003 and over time had become something else other than what they were the first few years in our index.

It's a long process. Danny, Irony, and I have spent the better half of the past year manually going through every site in our entire index, one by one.

It takes hours to review each site to make sure the site is clean, not involved in linking schemes and so forth.

It's easier to handle now because it is just the three of us. When a directory has 100s or 1000s of editors, there are going to be problems because not every editor knows how to identify spam (and some do know but just don't care).

Anyway, it's not a problem for us now and won't be in the future because of some changes we've made which will be seen in our new release -- which should be going live fairly soon.

:)

[g1smd]

>> I can call up a live page and insert any fake directory and it will still load the same story. <<

That's very bad news. You need to fix that so that it does not work like that.


You should stick with very short URLs for your content pages. Having just an article number for the content is not a problem. In fact it is often a good plan, as then there is no risk of duplicate content issues.

Of course, you can still have a folder-like structure for index pages, and subject categories. That too is not an issue.

[DigitalPrescott]

Oh, I'm still torn on this.

In a perfect world, which would perform better:
CURRENT: our-domain.com/carbrand-model-trim/123456
SUGGESTED: our-domain.com/car-review/carbrand-model-trim/123456


@WebSavvy - Do you think it took a year because of the quantity of pages? For reference, we have about 10,000 and use Google sitemaps.

Thanks all, and enjoy the dawn of the new year.

[WebSavvy]

No, it took a year because that's the new process. Thank the blackhats for that one!

The blackhats have been 301'ing their dippy domains to other people's domains with higher PR and then waiting for a PR update. Soon as the PR update is done, they remove the 301 and their domain then carries the same PR as the domain they'd 301'd it to.

One idiot even 301'd his stupid site to Google and thought he'd get a PR10 out of it! :rolleyes:

So, now when ANYONE restructures a site and there are massive amounts of 301s being used, Google quarantines those pages and compares them against what used to be there. If the SAME content is on the new page location as what was on the old page location, they will reassign the PR to the new page.

This isn't just speculation on my behalf, either. I have this on official authority from a team member inside google.

So, it will take a year (maybe a little less) because of this, regardless of the size of the site. However, it would seem logical that the more pages a site does have will cause it to be in quarantine a little longer.

Hope this helps.

[g1smd]

There is no issue in having:

Indexes:
our-domain.com/
our-domain.com/car-review/
our-domain.com/car-review/carbrand-model-trim/

Articles:
our-domain.com/art/123456
our-domain.com/art/123457
our-domain.com/art/123458
our-domain.com/art/123459

[DigitalPrescott]

That is how our index pages are set up, reflecting their directory level.

So, then you're saying introducing "/directoryname/" into the URL wouldn't help?

I'm exploring a test to see if we can implement for one group of content, then track rank/traffic impact. If best practices dictate adding the directory, perhaps we could do a slow roll out to minimize any short-term negative impact.

[SEFL]

That's not a bad way to do it, actually. Pick a category and test the effect, and then roll it out category by category rather than make major changes all at once.

I'd go weakest to strongest in terms of your traffic; do the categories that suck from a traffic standpoint first.

[WebSavvy]

Yep. That's what I said, too. (look up) -- :D
My advice was:
if you're still going to do it -- prepare everything well in advance, and move it in stages (if possible).

Anytime you're going to be making such a huge impact in a site like that, it should always be done in stages to see how the SEs (and visitors) will react.

In my particular situation, that rule didn't apply because my logic for doing it was to make the site 100% web accessible. It wasn't being done for any SEO benefit, or SE position/traffic changes.

So, it made sense from a usability standpoint to just go for the whole ball of wax all at once.

My goals were met with this, and that's what mattered to me.