Site Structure - Internal Linking Question

[Kay King]

I have a site I want to re-structure a bit but wonder if making the changes will result in pages losing ranking. I should know this but my mind is a blank on the subject right now (not unusual).

Usually, I'd just do it and see how it goes. I've re-organized sites before and it didn't seem to hurt them. However, this site gets good SEO traffic and is a reliable money maker. I don't want to screw it up

I'd be going from:

Index page to
link 1
link 2
link 3
etc

to

Index page to
Page A (category page) to
link 1
link 2
link 3

The reason for the change is to add a lot more content to the site in the next month or so and I need to improve the organization of the site as I do that.

Am I worrying about nothing? (This is an html site obviously)

kay

[babypar]

When I made changes like this, my site did take a hit but it came back after a few weeks

[marketguy]

You will probably take a hit for a little while, but i imagine that, after you add more content (and relevant content), that your site will actually rank better, once it comes back.

Short term loss versus long time gain.

Disclaimer: this is my $0.02

[Jacob Martus]

Originally Posted by Kay King

I have a site I want to re-structure a bit but wonder if making the changes will result in pages losing ranking. I should know this but my mind is a blank on the subject right now (not unusual).

Usually, I'd just do it and see how it goes. I've re-organized sites before and it didn't seem to hurt them. However, this site gets good SEO traffic and is a reliable money maker. I don't want to screw it up

I'd be going from:

Index page to
link 1
link 2
link 3
etc

to

Index page to
Page A (category page) to
link 1
link 2
link 3

The reason for the change is to add a lot more content to the site in the next month or so and I need to improve the organization of the site as I do that.

Am I worrying about nothing? (This is an html site obviously)

kay

It may have a temporary minimal impact but nothing major in my experience. It may even turn out to benefit you more in the long run. Site structure can go a long way to improving your internal linking power and I think it would be the right step to take.

It might affect you in the short term, but with you adding more content and improving your site structure, I can't see it having a long term negative impact.

Do your posts have some good links pointing directly at them or are they relying on most of their 'link-juice' from the home page? If they've got their own links supporting them, I can't see it impacting you at all.

Just make sure that your category page is not set to noindex. I've accidentally done something similar and only after a week or so realized that I had all of my categories set to noindex.

[InternetMarketingIQ]

make sure you don't kill your existing pages that are ranking. Use 301 redirects and submist a sitemap.

Honestly it might be time to consider a CMS so you can more easily add content in the future. HTML is very time consuming. I have put together sites with WordPress in excess of 600 pages and the plug ins make reorganizing data and updates a breeze.

The bottom line is Google ranks pages... so that's what matters. Make sure you know which pages bring you traffic and which do not.

I have upgraded sites from html, to joomla, to wordpress and never dropped ranking at all.

Look at your log files see how often you are crawled... try to do the update between crawls.

[Kay King]

Thanks, guys. Just wanted to make sure I wouldn't sink the ship.

IMIQ - I know most prefer WP but after using it several times for a while, it just doesn't suit me. The only reason this site needs major work is because it's almost ten years old and hasn't had a major update or much done to it for about four years or more.

Hadn't even thought about 301 redirects!

Great help - appreciate it.

kay

[erazer]

Looking at the new structure, I don't see why you would even need redirects if your content pages keep their urls and your category page simply links to them. The only thing that changes is the sitemap and that can only help the engines scour the site better (silo effect). This is what I like about HTML sites. So what am I missing?

[bookmark58]

Use 301 redirect for changing the link structure of the website.This is the best way to ensure that users and search engines are directed to the correct page. The 301 status code means that a page has permanently moved to a new location.