Website Restructure - Good or Bad for SEO?
-
Due to the fact that we aren't in the #1 position, (dropped from #5 to page 2 - You have to love Devs and IT), our heads have hired a SEO Audit/Consultant company to review everything we are doing.
I would like to post some of the things they are telling us to do, in which I don't 100% agree with and would like some other professional feedback. Especially since their site isn't marketed very well.
http://www.trupanionpetinsurance.com Disclaimer: (this site was a complete nightmare when I started a year and a half ago. Yes, there are many issues that still need to be addressed.)
Website Restructure
I agree we totally need to restructure our website. I have no idea what the previous SEO guy was thinking. The new SEO company is telling us that the structure is a big part of SEO.
- I don't believe so, but besides a little loss in 301 juice, is there any other downfalls?
- Are there any real benefits?
Similar question asked the other day (and answered by me): http://www.seomoz.org/q/don-t-want-to-lose-page-rank-what-s-the-best-way-to-restructure-a-url-other-than-a-301-redirect
-
Our site is doing the same. EZWatch-Security-Cameras.com
Restructuring allows you to organize your content into "Silos" and eliminate some of the unnecessary links through JSON objects, iframes, and nofollows (some debate there on which is optimal).
The Downfalls: There will probably be a 30-90 day dip in traffic but if you do page-to-page 301's it won't hurt nearly as much. Anytime you change URL's you are likely to see some inbound links drop off, but that happens when the pages don't change, so it's going to be minimal. Sure, 301's might drop some of your PR during transfer, but only a minimal amount according to matt cutts.
The Benefits: Organizing your content into silos and pruning cross-category links will allow you to control the flow of pagerank and anchor text much more effectively. Bruce Clay has a huge amount of resources on this, and they even cover it on their blog.
Will it be painful? Yes.
Will it be worth it? Yes.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Submitting Same Press Release Content to Multiple PR Sites - Good or Bad Practice?
I see some PR (press release) sites where they distribute the same content on many different sites and at end they give the source link is that Good SEO Practice or Bad ? If it is Good Practice then how Google Panda or other algorithms consider it ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KaranX0 -
Django and SEO - Multicountry site - Is Django really SEO friendly?
Hi Everyone, Our client is requesting that we use Django for her project. I am really uneasy about this for several reasons. The client wants a multi-country site that is completely SEO friendly. I love Wordpress and if I had to do this project it would be a Wordpress site with WPML + Yoast plugins site. Questions Is Django SEO friendly and what "plugins" should I be using? Is there a multi-country plugin for Django that keeps or adds typical SEO features? Can you recommend any great articles? Any example sites would be GREATLY appreciated Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Carla_Dawson0 -
What recommendations do you have for the SEO of this site?
Hello, Could you glance at this site and let me know if you see anything we could improve upon? www.nlpca.com A couple of notes: We're over-optimized for the term "NLP" on the home page. We're removing the footer links soon. We have 2 locations: San Francisco, CA and Salt Lake City, UT. Our main keyword is "NLP Training" but we would like to rank higher for the keyword "NLP". Also note that we're completely white hat, but we have international site-wide backlinks, and a couple of site-wide backlinks in site's footers - all friends and colleagues of ours.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
Brand sections performing badly in SERP's but all SEO tools think we are great
I have had this problem for some time now and I've asked many many experts. Search for Falke in Google.co.uk and this is what you get: http://www.sockshop.co.uk/by_brand/falke/ 3rd Our competitor
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jpbarber
http://www.mytights.com/gb/brand/falke.html 4th Our competitor http://www.uktights.com/section/73/falke 104th this is us ????? 9th for Falke tights with same section not our falke tights section? All sites seem to link to their brand sections in the same way with links in the header and breadcrumbs, Opensite exporler only shows 2 or 3 internal links for our compertitors, 1600+ from us?
Many of our brand sections rank badly Pretty Polly and Charnos brands rank page 2 or 3 with a brand subsection with no links to them, main section dosn't rank? Great example is Kunert, a German brand no UK competition our section has been live for 8 years, the best we can do is 71st Google UK, 1st on Bing (as we should be). I'm working on adding some quality links, but our comtetitors have a few low quality or no external links, only slightly better domain authority but rank 100+ positions better than us on some brands. This to me would suggest there is something onpage / internal linking I'm doing wrong, but all tools say "well done, grade A" take a holiday. Keyword denisty is similar to our competiors and I've tried reducing the number of products on the page. All pages really ranked well pre Penguin, and Bing still likes them. This is driving me nuts and costing us money Cheers Jonathan
www.uktights.com1 -
What is best practice SEO approach to re structuring a website with multiple domains and associated search engine rankings for each domain?
Hello Mozzers, I'm trying to improve and establish rankings for my website which has never really been optimised. I've inherited what seems to be a mess and have a challenge for you! The website currently has 3 different www domains all pointing to the one website, two are .com domains and one is a .com.au - the business is located in Australia and the website is primarily targeting Australian traffic. In addition to this there are a number of other non www domains for the same addresses pointing to the website in the CMS which is Adobe Business Catalyst. When I check Google each of the www domains for the website has the following number of pages indexed: www.Domain1,com 5,190 pages
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JimmyFlorida
www.Domain2.com 1,520 pages
www,Domain3.com.au 149 pages What is best practice approach from an SEO perspective to re organising this current domain structure? 1. Do I need to use the .com.au as the primary domain given that we are in this market and targeting traffic here? Thats what I have been advised and it seems to be backed up by what I have read here. 2. Do we re direct all domains to the primary .com.au domain? This is easily done in the Adobe Business Catalyst CMS however is this the same as a 301 redirect which is the best approach from an SEO perspective? 3. How do we consolidate all of the current separate domain rankings for the 3 different domains into the one domain rankings within Google to ensure improved rankings and a best practice approach? The website is currently receiving very little organic search traffic so if its simpler and faster to start again fresh rather than go through a complicated migration or re structure and you have a suggestion here please feel free to let me know your ideas! Thank you!0 -
Glossary SEO Tactics
A B2B client has a glossary of about 300 terms on its Website. It was done to enhance SEO value. The pages are rarely viewed and the text is often short. What are the best (and wackiest!) ideas to leverage this content for SEO. Here are some: Add videos, images Cross link to content pages Open up comments and get students in this sector to review terms and add their own What else do you suggest?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HarrAuto0 -
Predictive SEO
Hello all, I am trying to perform a predictive competitive SEO analysis to estimate what I will need to do to surpass my competitors. I am unsure of how to do this and would like some advice or link to an article. What I am trying to do is predict where I can rank in three months, six months and one year as well as what I need to do compared to my competitors. Specifically also to estimate how many links I would need to acquire to both my page as well as domain. I have already pulled my competitors domain links, page links, and age. Adam
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | digitalops0