Organic traffic down after 301 internal linkstructure

[link004]

Hi, i have a question.

On a wordpress site i made a change redirecting (301) all traffic from /category/subject to /subject/ - I removed the /category/.

Now i have a big drop in visitors from google. I waited for the traffic to return for some over one month now but with no luck.

What can i do best. return to /category/ with 301 redirect or will this hurt me more.

Thanks,

Robin

[zigojacko]

A small amount of weight / authority will be lost when changing the URL's and 301 redirecting to the new locations. It's only fractionable but could be the difference between 3 or 4 positions in the search results within your niche.

It's possible there could be an issue with the 3rd party plugin you used, they may have overlooked something critical in this process.

When did you notice the drop in rankings / traffic? Is it possible it could also be due to Panda/Penguin preparation/updates also?

[link004]

Thanks Geoff for youre responce.

I did change the permalinks structure with a plugin, this plugin also made a redirect to the new url.

I can see ranking drops for specefic category urls. these category used to get much traffic from google (organic).

But i waited for more then one month to get back the normal rankings id did have before. but wit no luck.

Because i dont want to have a drop again, i am not doing anything right now. i mean not changing back the urls to its original form with the /category/

i know there are several links pointing to category's.. external i mean. So when changing back to the original form should get the linkjuice flowing again. You should think.

But is this so? because the urls are new again in google.

I never tried this so i dont know what to expect.

[zigojacko]

Did you actually rewrite the URL's using mod_rewrite in .htaccess or change the permalink structure in Wordpress?

If the new URL structure was implemented correctly, did you test the 301 redirects to ensure they were actually redirecting to the correct destinations?

Have you analysed the traffic in analytics to establish what URL's are seeing the drop in traffic? If the old URL's were indexed in Google with authority, the change to your URL structure would have caused a dip in organic rankings and subsequently traffic...