OK to change URL structure - if you think it's causing a penalty?

[zehrila]

So lately one of my site took a toll in serps, i have come to a conclusion that it got to do with my URL structure. It is a 4 year old site, used to have good ranks but my new pages are now ranking no where, surprisingly my old pages still rank very good, but they are only handful. Any ways my current url structure is domainwidgets.com/console-widgets/green-widgets.html notice the widget in domain, category and product name, i have a feeling it is shouting out loud at google for ranks and google knows it well. I'm now intending to change the url structure to some thing like domainwidgets.com/widgets/console/green.html or i might remove the widgets from first category as well.

My reason to put up this thread is to ask whether it is a good idea to change the url structure and 301 old urls to new? i have done this in past with success and my ranks increased, but i have been going through some old threads and reading posts from some senior members suggesting to avoid this practice and if you really need to do this then you might just leave them at 404 and let google figure out new urls? what is your take at this?

[tedster]

You should be very sure that you've correctly diagnosed the penalty before taking on a drastic measure like changing URLs. This forum is full of reports about the kind of challenges and lost traffic that can follow.

If you are convinced that your current situation is untenable and that the URL alone is responsible for a "penalty" (something I've never seen, by the way) see this discussion first: URL structure redesign [webmasterworld.com]

[zehrila]

The reason i said that is because my urls which follow such patterns do not rank anywhere, however, pages from my forums rank normally, they follow a pattern like this domainwidgets.com/forums/quick-brown-fox.html

I have dropped every other kind of over optimization, adding unique content but still pages from main index do not rank. In my niche, Sites which are following my type of url structure have been dropped by google, i see a similar pattern across various niches, the sites which are ranking well for competitive phrases usually have a url structure in which they do not repeat their target keyword more than once.

I am not sure if its a penalty, i have a feeling its an auto filter at google's end or something which is causing me off from ranking. Since i have previously changed url structures in past and observed the boost in ranks and traffic, i think it might okay to experiment and see if new url structure clicks in as i have nothing much left to loose.

Ted: I read couple of your posts in webmasterworld and some other blogs where you gave interviews and felt you do not recommend a 301 redirect when it comes to changing a URL structure within the domain, is it right? if so why?

Thanks for posting that link, although its an old thread, but it still contains really valuable information, such as changing internal link structure before putting a mass 301 redirect etc.

[tedster]

Sorry my past information wasn't clearer. I was talking about a complete website redesign for a large enterprise website, usually with a move to a new CMS.

I most definitely DO recommend 301 redirects when URLs change. But I do not necessarily use a redirect for ALL of the URLs on a very large website - and that's especially true when a CMS change has removed any easy pattern to use in writing a regular expression.

I have had success in those cases by first doing a study of backlinks and traffic patterns. Then I only worry about redirecting those URLs that have good backlinks are important entry pages in some way. The rest of the URLs I let return a 404 and depend on the site's internal link structure to point googlebot to the new URLs for discovery.

It sounds in your case as though you could write just a couple of rules for the change you plan to make, and that would be fine.