Most efficient way to change site structure?
-
I would like to change my sites structure to be more efficient for SEO. I have a fear that the changes will have a potential impact on my current rankings, but know this would be a good long term decision.
My site is wordpress, so the changes are relatively easy to make.
What are some ways to change the site structure without damaging your rank? I would have to have to clean up a bunch of errors, so is the best way to simply do 301 redirects on the old pages?
-
Can you offer an example of a couple URLs in your current structure, along with what you plan for your new structure?
Regarding the errors, do you have them now? Or do you believe the change will cause errors?
-
Making solid SEO changes will only have a positive impact in the long run. However there is no magic i'm afraid, and like everything there is a ying and a yang and unfortunately you may see a dip in rankings whilst Google reconfigures itself based on your changes. If your changes are done correctly this should not take too long though.
I would have to have to clean up a bunch of errors, so is the best way to simply do 301 redirects on the old pages?
This really depends on what the errors are?
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
-
Need references to a company that can transition our 1000 page website from Http to Https without breaking our SEO backlinks and site structure
Hi Ya'll I'm looking for a company or independent who can transition our website from http to https. I want to make sure they know what they're doing with a Wordpress website. More importantly, i want to make sure they don't break any seo juice from external sources while internally nothing gets broken. Anyone have any good recommendations? You can reply back or DM me. Best, Shawn
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Shawn1240 -
SEO question regarding rails app on www.site.com hosted on Heroku and www.site.com/blog at another host
Hi, I have a rails app hosted on Heroku (www.site.com) and would much prefer to set up a Wordpress blog using a different host pointing to www.site.com/blog, as opposed to using a gem within the actual app. Whats are peoples thoughts regarding there being any ranking implications for implementing the set up as noted in this post on Stackoverflow: "What I would do is serve your Wordpress blog along side your Rails app (so you've got a PHP and a Rails server running), and just have your /blog route point to a controller that redirects to your Wordpress app. Add something like this to your routes.rb: _`get '/blog', to:'blog#redirect'`_ and then have a redirect method in your BlogController that simply does this: _`classBlogController<applicationcontrollerdef redirect="" redirect_to="" "url_of_wordpress_blog"endend<="" code=""></applicationcontrollerdef>`_ _Now you can point at yourdomain.com/blog and it will take you to the Wordpress site._
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Anward0 -
Is it worth changing themes to be Responsive, and risk a SERP change?
I've got a site that ranks #1 for it's term. It's Worpress on Thesis 1.85. The site is not responsive and cannot be because Thesis 1x is not (and Thesis 1x is a dead end). I really would like my site responsive, but I fear changing things might affect my #1 rank. The least impactful change I could do is move to Thesis 2.x, but I have come to really dislike the company and hate to get locked in again. There are other frameworks I would prefer to move to, but their impact on my pages' source would be much more. So, my question is, is it worth moving to a new theme (keeping the layout looking exactly the same, although the "source" would look different) just to make the site responsive? Is it that important?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bizzer0 -
Any Suggestions For My Site?
I've recently started a website that is based on movie posters. The site has fundamentally been built for users and not SEO but I'm wondering if anyone can see any problems or just general advice that may help with our SEO efforts? The "content" on the website are the movie posters. I know Google likes text content, but I don't see what else we could add that wouldn't be purely for SEO. My site is: http://www.bit.ly/ZSPbTA
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | whispertera0 -
I have a general site for my insurance agency. Should I create niche sites too?
I work with several insurance agencies and I get this questions several times each month. Most agencies offer personal and business insurance and in a certain geographic location. I recommend creating a quality general agency site but would they have more success creating other nice sites as well? For example, a niche site about home insurance and one about auto insurance. What would your recommendation be?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lagunaitech1 -
Does Google punish sites for Backlinks?
Here is Matt Cutts video, for those of you who have not seen it already. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4dAWb5jUws (Very Short) In this Video Matt explains that Google does not look at backlinks. Many link spamming sites have detected, there have been many website receiving warning messages in their Google web tools to deindex these links, etc.. My theory is that Google will not punish sites for backlinks. However, they manually check for "link farming sites" and warn anyone affiliated with them, just in case these links were built from a competitor. This way they can eliminate all the "Bad Link Farm" sites and not hurt anyone who does not deserve to be hurt. Google is not going to give us all their information to rank, they dont want us to rank. They want us to PPC. However, they do want to have the best SERPs available. I call it Google juggling! Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODinosaur0 -
Scapers and Other Sites Outranking
Post panda, there is definitely more talk about scrapers or other (more authoritative) sites outranking the original content creators in the SERPS. The most common way this problem is addressed (from what I've seen) is by rewriting the content and try your hardest to be the first one to be indexed or just ignoring it from an on page standpoint and do more link dev. Does anyone have any advice on the best way to address? Should site owners be looking deeper into their analytics and diagnostics before doing the rewrites?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Troyville0 -
Is there a FastTrack to re-index? a site?
Hello... i just started with a new client this week, before working with us his last domain-hosting-webdev provider cancel their account and took off the entire site and left them with a nice "under construction page" (NOT) and added the noindex, nofollow tags. 4 weeks after that, we come into the scene and of course our client it's expecting us to reinsert at least for branded terms the site, and he wants it done on a matter of hours... I tried my best to explain that it's not possible and we are doing everything we can't.... now i ask you guys.. I already created de GWT account, Created a well structured Sitemap and submitted it to google and bing, did the onpage optimizitation at least the basics... there is a way to speed up the process? kind of like "hey you! google bot, forget about the noindex nonsense a come crawl again?" Any help would be great Daniel
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | daniel.alvarez0