Nav Structure - Are you hurt when changing it?

Does chaning your nav structure hurt your google rating

[moppy56]

Hi,

I am doing a re-design of my site and obviously I'm tempted to change the navigation structure of my links.

While I "do not" plan to delete any pages I do feel that some of my main "navigation menu" links that will appear on each page could be better served with different ones.

My questions are these:

1. do you think chaning the main nav menu links on your site will hurt your google ranking itself by displacing pr rank to different pages?

2. what is your opinion on adding new content and how it hurts your search engine standing? Do you get a short term, two to three month hit, when you add content only to get it back in the long run?

Thx!

[caveman]

I've seen situation where changing sitewide nav on a largescale basis seems to have temporarily tanked a site's rankings. The SE's and particularly G, seem to get cautiious about continuing to rank sites where massive internal changes occur.

Basically, the more well linked and popular a site is, the more immune it seems to be from these sorts of changes.

I do not hesitate to change individual site wide nav links from time to time to improve user experience, clarity, etc.

But I am cautious to a degree with making lots of changes at once, or making frequent changes, both of which seem to signal the possibility of "too much SEO" to some of the SE's. This is based both on observation, and personal experience.

[moppy56]

Thanks for the feedback /

There are two main things I might do:

1. one of my main nav links is to my "links" page which seems like a waste to me and a drain on my pr.

2. Instead of linking to 20 or 25 internal pages from my home page I have "thought" about linking to 5 or six pages from my home page and then have those five or six pages link to another five or six pages, etc..

It seems like this would transfer more PR throught the site and this would also allow me to "theme" my sections of the site and text links more specifically.

But who knows in the end / I've also heard that deep linking from the home page can really help / (:

thx -

[caveman]

Agree regarding your links page.

Also, try this: Themes [webmasterworld.com]. And scroll down so you don't miss Brett's post. ;-)

[moppy56]

Thanks, I definintely will.

[caveman]

P.S. What we generally do is link to the main cat's from the homepage, and if there are key pages underneath of a given cat, link to those from the homepage also. OR, get good links to those subpages, which is an equally good if not better approach. ;-)

[moppy56]

You're the man caveman - I'm going to do just that but I still freak that there will be an adjustment period with my rankings.

I'll try to do it over time if possible.