How stupid is it to launch a new URL structure when our traffic is climbing?
-
We decided to redesign our site to make it responsive as Google is ranking sites based on mobile friendliness. Along with this we have changed our URL structure, meta tags, page content, site navigation, internal interlinking.
How stupid is it to launch this site right in the middle of record traffic? Our traffic is climbing 10,000 more visitors every day with the current site. Visitors have increased 34% over the last 30 days compared to the previous 30 days.
-
I would tend to agree with Lynn Patchett. Could you tier out your changes and plan to methodically release it in small increments while monitoring the effects? This way you could begin with smaller changes, even a few url's with an update and gauge its effectiveness (or non)...
-
I think I speak for everyone with that type of traffic increase you should not gamble mixing it out.
-
Is all that new traffic organic? Is your sale/conversion rate increasing at the same rate?
If the answer to either of those questions is yes then you should be moving cautiously. If the main aim is to make the site mobile friendly then do that first and monitor traffic/rankings for a couple of weeks. After that depending on what you see try implementing the other changes you have planned in order and give a week or two in between each change to monitor how things are going.
Changing urls, titles, metas, internal linking and content all at the same time on a site with that much traffic (and I am assuming at least some profit).... is crazy. If rankings/traffic plummet, which change caused it? Where do you even start diagnosing with that many changes at once? Nightmare!
-
Hire someone to make sure all of your redirects are setup correctly.
-
First off, getting your site mobile optimized is smart.
Next, you need to have a clear understanding of where all this traffic is coming from. If it's organic, dig into Google Webmaster Tools & even Semrush to determine how much of it is from branded queries. If a large percentage of your traffic is from non-branded organic searches, I would be very cautious of changing URLs & title tags - unless your organization is completely okay with the possible ranking & traffic loss that will most likely come with all the necessary 301 redirects. The current URLs are already far, far cleaner than a lot of sites (especially ecommerce sites that have crazy dynamic URLs).
With all that said, I have worked with a few brands in similar situations where we decided to move forward with a site overhaul (which is what you're describing) because (a) most of their traffic was either direct or branded organic and (b) they worked with an SEO agency years ago that implemented a number of spammy tactics that we needed to clean up. Ultimately, we decided that the benefits of sort of "getting straight with Google" was worth the possible ranking & traffic loss.
I hope this helps!
-
Have you looked at your analytics to see which mobile devices are driving the greatest amount of traffic then tested your site on those devices? This would be a key step in my opinion. It might be that your site already works great and doesn't need the redesign. If the redesign does go forward however, make sure that it looks stellar on these devices as well. It's highly likely that you can cover 80 - 90% of your mobile visits by checking the look and feel on 10 - 20 devices.
-
Traffic is 7.7 million in the last 30 days. Domain is 16 years old. The URLs are not bad - instead of /used-perfume-for-sale/chanel-number5 it would now be /perfume/chanel-number-5/
-
It depends on if the traffic is extremely low and how old the domain? How bad the URLs are there's a lot of different questions that need to be answered with the actual .if you're only doing 100 people a month and he went up by 30 people yeah it's safe to say you should be okay to changing them there are good reasons to change URL structures however there are also awesome reason keep them. If you cansend me a URL I would be happy to tell you if I agree with your choice or not.
tom
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
-
Will URLS With Existing 301 Redirects Be as Powerful As New URLS In Serps?
Most products on our site have redirects to them from years of switching platform and merely trying to get a great and optimised URL for SEO purposes. My question is this: If a product URL has alot of redirects (301's), would it be more beneficial to me to create a duplicated version of the product and start fresh with a new URL? I am not on here trying to gain backlinks but my site is tn nursery dot net (proof:)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tammysons
I need some quality help figuring out what to do.
Tammy0 -
SEO issues? New functionality added to website and now hash (in URL) - fragments
Hi All! We have new nice functionality on website, but now i doubt if we will have SEO issues. Duplicate content and if google is able to spider our website. See: http://www.allesvoorbbq.nl/boretti-da-vinci-nero.html#608=1370
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RetailClicks
With the new functionality we can switch between colors of the models (black / white / red / yellow).
When you switch with Ajax the content of other models is fetched without refreshing the page. (so the url initial part of url stays the same (for initial model) only part behind # changes. The other models are also accessible by there own url, like the red one: http://www.allesvoorbbq.nl/boretti-da-vinci-rosso.html#608=1372 So far so good. But now the questions: 1. We use to have url like /boretti-da-vinci-nero.html - also our canonical is that way But now if we access that url our system is adding automatically the #123-123 to the url to indicate which model(color) is shown. Is this hurting SEO or confusing google? Because it seems that the clean url is not accessible anymore? (it adds now #123-123) 2. Should we add some tags around the different types (colors) to prevent google from indexing that part of website? Every info would be very helpfull! We do not want to lose our nice rankings thanks to MOZ! Thanks all!
Jeroen0 -
Confused: Url Restructure
Hello, We're giving our website a bit of a spring clean in terms of SEO. The site is doing ok, but after the time invested in SEO, content and last year's migration of multiple sites into one, we're not seeing the increase in traffic we had hoped. Our current urls look something like this: /a-cake-company/cup-cakes/strawberry We have the company name as the first level as we with the migration we migrated many companies into one site. What we're considering is testing some pages with a structure like this: /cup-cakes/cup-cake-company-strawberry So we'll lose a level and we'll focus more on the category of the product rather than the brand. What's your thoughts on this? We weren't going to do a mass change yet, just a test, but is this something we should be focusing on? In terms of organisation our current url structure is perfect, but what about from an SEO point of view? In terms of keywords customers are looking for both options. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HB170 -
Attack of the dummy urls -- what to do?
It occurs to me that a malicious program could set up thousands of links to dummy pages on a website: www.mysite.com/dynamicpage/dummy123 www.mysite.com/dynamicpage/dummy456 etc.. How is this normally handled? Does a developer have to look at all the parameters to see if they are valid and if not, automatically create a 301 redirect or 404 not found? This requires a table lookup of acceptable url parameters for all new visitors. I was thinking that bad url names would be rare so it would be ok to just stop the program with a message, until I realized someone could intentionally set up links to non existent pages on a site.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | friendoffood1 -
URL structure for categories, sub categories and products
Hi, I'm looking for some advice about URL hierarchy and the best way to structure URLs for SEO with regards to categories, sub categories and product pages. The way the site is set up displays the URLs as such, example: 1. /badge-accessories/ 2. /badge-accessories/plastic-wallets/ 3. /badge-accessories/plastic-wallets/clear-flexible-wallets/ I am questioning whether it would be best to keep it like this (which the site developers are suggesting) or change to something like: 1. /badge-accessories/ 2. /plastic-wallets/ 3. /clear-plastic-flexible-wallets/ Or something like: 1. /badge-accessories/ 2. /plastic-wallets/ 3. /plastic-wallets/clear-flexible-wallets/ Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kerry_Jones0 -
Wordpress Permalink Structure
A quick Wordpress Permalink checkup... I'm generally a fan of %postname% Permalink structure in Wordpress - although this does create a completely flat architecture, so that ALL Pages AND Posts are found at www.domain.com/_________ I'm sure I've heard, read, or ingested somewhere that it makes more sense to use /blog/%postname% which then makes all Blog Posts reside at www.domain.com/blog/________ with the static Page content still being at www.domain.com/________ Any thoughts to why this would NOT be a good idea? To me this seems more logical.. and like I say I'm sure I've heard an authority say Google kind of prefers that it can differentiate Blog content from everything else. I've used this successfully on a few sites so far, and all seems to be good. (Moz although not Wordpress, uses this structure for it's blog). Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GregDixson0 -
E-commerce Adding New Content - Blog vs New Page
I have an ecommerce site (www.brick-anew.com) focused on Fireplace products and we also have a separate blog (fireplacedecorating.com) focused on fireplace decorating. My ecommerce site needs new content, pages, internal links, etc... for more Google love, attention, and rankings. My question is this: Should I add a blog to the ecommerce site for creating new content or should I just add and create new pages? I have lots of ideas for relevant new content related to fireplaces. Are there any SEO benefits to a blog over new static pages? Thanks! SAM
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SammyT0 -
Spammy? Long URLs
Hi All: Is it true that URLs such as this following one are viewed as "spammy" (besides being too long) and that such URLs will negatively affect ranks for keywords and page ranks: http://www.repairsuniverse.com/ipod-parts-ipod-touch-replacement-repair-parts-ipod-touch-1st-gen-replacement-repair-parts.html My thinking is that the page will perform better once it is 301 redirected to a shorter page name, such as: http://www.repairsuniverse.com/ipod-touch-1G-replacement-parts.html It also appears that these long URLs are also more likely to break, creating unnecessary 404s. <colgroup><col width="301"></colgroup> Thanks for your insight on this issue!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | holdtheonion0