Must I 301? Moving pages on same domain

[Gavolar]

I have about 10 pages in the root file on my site that is about widgets, the site has grown and I want to put those 10 pages in a folder with 10 new pages.
So the url will change...
Do I have to do a 301 redirect for the old pages? I would be happy to do a 301 but the site is on a shared windows server and its proving to be a nightmare to get it moved.
The 10 pages don't get bring in hardly any traffic from google but in the future Im sure the 10 new ones can (once I promote and change a few things).

There are no quality incoming links from other sites pointing to these pages that I'm worried about losing.
My main concern is dupe content and upsetting my other SERP and the future of the new pages I want to promote.

Thanks for any help!

[aakk9999]

If the old URLs of pages that you are moving to new URL return 404 Not Found, then you will not have duplicate content.

With regards to upsetting other your SERPs, it is difficult to say without knowing how these pages sit in the context of your site, (site subject versus pages subject, how are they interlinked with the rest of the site, would you be keeping internal anchors and just replaced old URLs with new URLs or would you be changing where the new pages link from etc.) Also, IMHO, if the site is a very small site you have more chance of upsetting SERPs than if the site is larger.

<added>
I would perhaps do this in two steps:
1) Move existing pages to new URLs, update internal links to point to new URLs and let the old URLs return 404, then leave it like this for a while and watch the ranking
2) once this stabilises, then I would go and change the content of these pages that are now on new URLs, and perhaps one by one rather than all at once.
</added>

[Gavolar]

Thanks aakk9999, sounds kinda experimental though

[aakk9999]

@gavolar

With regards to "experimental", if I understood well your earlier PM, you are not just changing 10 URLs, (which with regards to your earlier duplicate content question is a pretty straight forward).

But with regards to your question on impact on SERPs for the rest of the site, you are also moving roughly half of the content from (a different) existing page to a new page in order to introduce a new category page for these 10 pages.

Therefore it is not just a question of simply replacing a current URLs with a new URLs for 10 existing pages.

So *if* you experience any fluctuation in SERPs, it may be that it is nothing to do with changed URLs, but rather with the fact that you have made some change in your site structure and removed roughly half of the content from the existing page to create a new category page as well as introduced a new category on the home page, which in itself may (or may not) have impact on the home page ranking.

Only you know where your current page (from which you will remove 1/2 content) ranks and what for, how is interlinked within the site and only you can make a decision what risk to take.

In such cases it would always be "kind of experimental" but a well thought changes executed well should pay off long term more often than not.

[valex]

Something similar has happened here: last month I changed a major category slug with a "prettier" one which's affected 50% of my site's URL structure. I've properly 301 redirected all URLs, but the result now is: 90% of my Google traffic is gone! After banging my head against the wall for the reason and analyzing every possible change that I've made recently this is the only thing that makes sense :) So my lesson is: don't change!

[Gavolar]

Sorry to hear about your situation Valex. How many pages did you move? and about how many pages are on your site?

Thx

[valex]

I have moved appr 1000 posts and 1600 pages out of 5000 pages :) Actually I've changed half of the site's internal structure... plus some other design changes. Still not quite sure if this is the reason to lose my traffic?! Just to add - this is a WordPress site if that matters :)

[Robert Charlton]

It's always a mistake to make too many different kinds of changes simultaneously, as doing so makes it very difficult to determine cause and effect.

I think that aakk9999's multi-step approach to isolate the changes is extremely ingenious. It allows one to isolate (to an increased degree) what does what. I'm mentally filing away this nuanced approach.