Regarding site url structure

[SammisBest]

OK so there are already some answers to questions similar to this but mine might be a little more specific. OK website is www.bestlifeint.com Most of our product pages are as such: http://www.bestlifeint.com/products-soy.html for instance. However I was trying to help the SEO for certain pages (namely two) with the URL's and had some success with another page our Soy Meal Replacement I changed the site URL of this page from

www.bestlifeint.com/products-meal

to

www.bestlifeint.com/Soy-Amazing-Meal-Replacement-with-Omega-3s.html

(notice I dropped the /product part of url and made it more seo friendly. The old page for this page was something like www.bestlifeint.com/products-meal

The issue is that recently this new page and another page I have changed  http://www.bestlifeint.com/Whey-Milk-Alternative.html

I have dropped the "/product" on the URL even though they are both products.

The new Meal Replacement page used to be ranked like 6th on google at the begining of the month and now is like 48th or something. The new "whey milk" page (http://www.bestlifeint.com/Whey-Milk-Alternative.html) is ranked like 45th or something for "Whey Milk" when the old page...."products/wheyrice.html" was ranked around 18th or so at the begining of the month.

Have I hurt these two pages by not following www.bestlifeint.com/product.... site structure?

And focusing more on the URL SEO?

I have both NEW pages receiving all link juice inside web site so they are the new pages (can not go to old page) and recently seeing that google has pretty much dropped the old pages in search rankings I have deleted these two pages.

Do i just need to just wait and see? According to my research we should rank much higher for "Whey Milk" we should be on the first page according to googles own statements of searchers finding good relevant material.

Any advice moving forward?

Thanks,

Brian

[SammisBest]

Thanks. Yeah I don't have 301 capabilities with our webhost but I did do a head tag html redirect for about a week or so with two pretty empty pages (as in content) of the old pages, but then couldn't find them on google searches so I just deleted the pages. I do have the 404 error page to access these pages fairly easy in case it is still found on searches. Is there anything wrong with my changing these url's or the logic behind it? Or continuing this trend. When is the right time to change a url? (Given this particular situation)... And do things like changing ".com/products" structure (in this case getting rid of it) have any negative impact on SEO? Thank you Area203 or Brad for any advice.

[AREA203SEMTeam]

It usually takes some time for Google to recognize, analyze and rank according to the changes that you make to URL structures.  Just make sure that you are doing a 301 from the old to new URL.  This will help search Engines figure out what is happening faster.  You new URLS are relevant to the product so eventually you will rank higher for those keywords included in the URL.  Give it some time.

[bradwayland]

So you 301 redirected the old pages?  Is there a difference in the content on the actual page?