How to avoid seo loss after URL restructuring / change?

[sumanpatra]

We are doing On Page SEO over haul of our website. Our old url used to be mydomain.com/send/FlowersInCity-1-CityName.html we are changing it to mydomain.com/send/Flowers-to-CityName

Firstly, will it be advisable to do so since we are in the top 10 in most of the Keywords (but losing ranking each month):

The website is very content rich site. Till beginning of 2012, we used be in the top three spots mostly due to On Page and Good content, thus getting the inbound links automatically. But now the things have change, industry has lot of competition and few players have already done heavy SEO for their website, both On and off page thus overtaking us in Ranking.

We are also doing other requisite On Page and Off Page work but I am struck with the URL decision part.

Secondly, and MOST IMPORTANTLY – if I should change the url, how to minimize the risk of losing the present SEO in this kind of URL restructuring case?

Thanks

Suman

[Boodreaux]

I think there is something you can do with the old and new sitemap that helps too.  It is on this forum somewhere.

[eyepaq]

Hi,

There is a golden rule related with urls: "never change those"

You need to have a very strong reason in order to touch urls that are ranking well.

But if you do decide to change them there is only one very important thing you need to do: 301 redirect old urls to new ones. It will solve most of the problems.

If you do lose rankings now - there are other things to change - that html at the end is irrelevant for the rankings.

So the bottom line is if you do decide to touch the urls, adding a permanent 301 redirect to the old urls that will point to the new ones is crucial.

My 2 c. Hope it helps.

If you post the urls another 2 cents will be added