Forum Moderators: phranque
I'd like to know what the impact would be for the following changes I'd like to make to my site with regards to guides.
Currently - the site is structured as follows for my guides
http://www.example.com/ABCD/guides/...
I would like to change this to
http://www.example.com/guides/ABCD/...
Where ABCD has a number of variations and ends with the guide title name, for example /guide/titleofguide/
It would help keep all my guides in one location but I am worried the impact this may have on SEO.
My current look on things are that Google may find that my guides are well associated with ABCD and by changing it; Google will see my guides as less relevant to each ABCD.
I guess a question here would be; is Google clever enough to associate guides depending on their location or would it prefer all guides to be placed together and help the site as a whole?
It would make my life a lot easier if I can do this but worried on the SEO impact. I'm prepared to take a hit on some positions that guides rank for, but that's as far as I'm committed to losing.
Thanks
It would make my life a lot easier
Then that is a good reason to make the change.
There might be a few ranking hiccups while the search engines respond to the change, but the new pages should rebound to ranks that are similar to what you have now, if:
- the page content and structure remain the same
- you immediately set up proper 301 redirects from the old URLs to their new equivalents
- you're careful about updating all links pointing to the old URLs
If you are thinking about using new templates for the new pages, there's nothing wrong with that but understand that it might affect your rankings for reasons that are not related to the URL change. It's often easier to understand what's happening, SEO-wise, if you make one change at a time.
the following threads should have some helpful information for you:
[webmasterworld.com...]
[webmasterworld.com...]
you will also find these and other useful threads listed in the "Google Hot Topics - FAQs" thread which is always pinned to the top of the Google Search Forum listing.
Then, depending on how the url structure changed, the page "rank" may change since keywords deeper in the directory hierarchy can be deemed less important when compared to those found in higher up directories... or so I would guess based on logic... ;-)
keywords deeper in the directory hierarchy can be deemed less important
That would be a very minor factor unless the new URLs had fewer and weaker links than the old ones.
Link structures trump file structures.
A page that is one or two clicks away from the home page will be seen as reasonably important even if it's umpteen directories deep.
I would expect the new pages to take a week or two to settle down in the SERPS.
301 re-directs will be placed on all;
http://www.example.com/ABCD/guides/...
to
http://www.example.com/guides/ABCD/...
What I'd like the opinion of is and I don't think I explained very well is -
IF
http://www.example.com/ABCD/ were a highly ranked page in Google with loads of rich content such as "/ABCD/guides/", "/ABCD/blogs/", "/ABCD/somethingelse/" etc...
And IF
http://www.example.com/EFGH/ where similar with "/EFGH/guides/", "/EFGH/blogs/", "/EFGH/somethingelse/" etc...
By taking the guides folder from each and placing it in front i.e. http://www.example.com/guides/ABCD/etc.../ & http://www.example.com/guides/EFGH/etc.../
Will Google no longer associate guides with its relevant place i.e. /ABDC/ & /EFGH/? Will it associate guides with http://www.example.com/ as a whole and therefore could affect the relevant content to each section of my site?
Hope this makes sense, I better stop there as I'm starting to confuse myself!
Thanks again
Don't over-think this. The most important detail to obsess about is organizing your 301 redirects and it sounds as though you're working on that.
One added thought: Make sure your 301's lead from the old page to the new in one step. Avoid chains of redirects.
Let us know how it goes.
