themaninthejar - 9:26 am on Jun 23, 2012 (gmt 0)

never, never, never change the urls unless you have no choice

A year and a half ago I managed the full upgrade of my site to a more streamlined and "modern" feel. I retained every url unchanged right down to the file extension and redirected redundant pages to relevant surviving content. I retained all metas, content and internal anchor text. Google didn't even blink...

I then waited until the whole new-look site was cached before I started to alter and update content, nav and metas. Traffic was increasing nicely - until January... but that's a different furry animal...