How would restructuring the navigation of my website affect my rankings?
-
I want to restructure the navigation of my website for a few reasons:
1. It isn't intuitive/clear to the user
2. It is way too big, it has too many links and thus causes the number of links on many pages to be >100.
3. I want to get rid of file extensions as part of the URLs (.html, .php)
4. I want to achieve a "tree"-like navigation system, with categories, subcategories and so on.
In the process of cleaning up my website, I had to 301 redirect a lot of duplicate pages, fix broken links, etc. I have a lot of 301 redirects already, and in the process of restructuring the navigation of my website I know I'm going to get more.
Will the addition of new 301 redirects have an effect on my rankings? (I'm basically going to be changing all of the URLs)
What kind of SEO effect will restructuring the navigation at the top of the page (reducing the # of links on the main menu) have on my site?
What is the best strategy to implement in this situation?
-
Thanks Dan,
My main concern is moving some of the links on the top menu of my website elsewhere and reducing the number of on-page links.
My goal is basically to increase the link juice given to my more important pages, and have my other, less important pages, accessible from a deeper level within my website.
I think this methodology follows the best practices - but, again, I am worried about any potential negative effects that can occur with the changes I want to implement.
-
Hi
From what I have seen, if the NEW structure is done well (good architecture, good on-page optimization, better navigation, better keyword optimization in the new urls - its all an improvement from the old navigation) and you 301 everything corectly - you should see an improvement in rankings. Although this can take a week or two.
And of course submit a new xml sitemap. I also block the old pages/directories in robots.txt (this may be a little overkill but I do it anyway).
One extra tip is to just do a site:www.mydomain.com search in google to uncover any pages in their index you may not know about, or have overlooked and be sure to 301 those to the most relevant pages as well.
-Dan
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Ranking
Our new website has been live since April - it's an old domain but we've had a new website built on Magento 2, however, it's not ranking for most of our main keywords. Can anyone offer any advice?
Web Design | | RayflexGroup0 -
Weird Layout on Initial Website Load?
Whenever I open my site from an uncached source, like google incognito, for a split second it displays purple links and a white background while it loads the rest of the content. I've included a screenshot. Is there any way to fix that.? The site is www.kemprugegreen.com. u8P9q
Web Design | | KempRugeLawGroup1 -
HTML and XML sitemaps for one website.
Hi all, First, we have created a HTML sitemap for our wordpress website. Then we again generated XML sitemap and submitted same in search console. It's been more than a week and still new XML sitemap has not been indexed yet. I can still only see HTML sitemap for search results "company sitemap". Also search console do have only XML sitemap. Both sitemaps are accessible but only HTML has been indexed. Is there anything wrong having 2 sitemaps? Why XML sitemap not been indexed? Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
Does too much inline CSS impact SEO rankings
Hello, Does implementing a lot of inline CSS have a negative impact on SEO rankings? I imagine it could affect page speed, but any other issues I might run in to?
Web Design | | STP_SEO1 -
Mergers & Acquisitions - Website Transition Good practice
Hi everyone, I was wondering if anyone has come across good practice for maintaining websites after a merger or acquisition where there needs to be an association between two websites of the two companies involved. For an acquisition, I'm considering moving the acquired company to a sub domain of the parent company e.g. aquiredcompany.parentcompany.com. On both websites there wmay be a prominant popup so visitors can switch between the websites if they have visited the incorrect one. One worry I have is the acquired company has some good rankings, which I want to keep. I will of course manage the process through 301 redirects. But I was wondering if anyone has any thoughts on this approach or can suggest any better solutions. Thanks in advance, Stuart
Web Design | | Stuart260 -
Multilingual website in Belgium?
Hi Mozzers, I have a question about a multilingual website for a client for us in Belgium. As you guys know in Belgium we speak French and Dutch. The situation:
Web Design | | WeAreDigital_BE
At the moment we have client.be for the Dutch version of the website and client.be/fr for the French version. All tagged with href lang tags and webmaster tools. The client wants to build a new website. There are three possibilities: 1. We keep using subfolders (same configuration as the current situation). In my head this would be my first choice. 2. We just let them build two separate domains.
client-keywordindutch.be & client-keywordinfrench.be 3. We use subdomains. As the development company is not sure that it is technically possible to use subdomains, I need to know which option is the next best one and which option you would give priority and why? Should we just push through with the subfolder? Thank you for your thoughts!
Sander0 -
Correlation of PageSpeed Insights and YSLow scores to high rankings in SERPs
I'm pretty well rounded when it comes to SEO, but I'm just frazzled when it comes to YSlow and PageSpeed Insights. Of course, individual factors are important to site performance, but it has become increasingly difficult to recommend open-source and hosted platforms that don't pass muster on many of the performance standards being tested. For example, entity tags, expires headers, and cookie-free domains are nearly impossible to set with hosted platforms, and none of the major open-source CMS like WordPress, Joomla, Magento, Odoo, etc., consistently put javascript at the bottom or make "fewer" HTTP requests. Mobile is now king, so quite a few people (including myself) need to "mobilize" their website by late April or risk dropping in mobile search rankings. Nearly all my clients run multi-lingual e-commerce websites, so that really limits options but makes it that much more important to keep current with Google's SEO recommendations. What platforms perform best taking into account any correlation with YSlow scores/PageSpeed Insights to high floating sites on SERPs? Would one spend the money to "fix" their current platform that has worked very well to date or switch to a mobile-ready platform?
Web Design | | kwoolf0 -
Should Our Mobile Responsive Version of our Ecommerce Site include the on Page content to Help with Rankings
Hello All, We are soon to launch our new redesigned website along with a mobile responsive version but i have noticed we currently don't include the on page Content we have on the mobile version which we have on the desktop version to help with rankings etc. I am not sure how google does mobile research with regards to rankings. We have designed our responsive version to be as user friendly as possible at the expense of having to much clutter/content but I am wondering now , if we will rank on mobile if all our on page content isn't present. Just wondered if we should include it at the bottom of the pages with say a "Read more" extension to help avoid clutter? Any advice greatly appreciated thanks Pete
Web Design | | PeteC120