How would restructuring the navigation of my website affect my rankings?
-
I want to restructure the navigation of my website for a few reasons:
1. It isn't intuitive/clear to the user
2. It is way too big, it has too many links and thus causes the number of links on many pages to be >100.
3. I want to get rid of file extensions as part of the URLs (.html, .php)
4. I want to achieve a "tree"-like navigation system, with categories, subcategories and so on.
In the process of cleaning up my website, I had to 301 redirect a lot of duplicate pages, fix broken links, etc. I have a lot of 301 redirects already, and in the process of restructuring the navigation of my website I know I'm going to get more.
Will the addition of new 301 redirects have an effect on my rankings? (I'm basically going to be changing all of the URLs)
What kind of SEO effect will restructuring the navigation at the top of the page (reducing the # of links on the main menu) have on my site?
What is the best strategy to implement in this situation?
-
Thanks Dan,
My main concern is moving some of the links on the top menu of my website elsewhere and reducing the number of on-page links.
My goal is basically to increase the link juice given to my more important pages, and have my other, less important pages, accessible from a deeper level within my website.
I think this methodology follows the best practices - but, again, I am worried about any potential negative effects that can occur with the changes I want to implement.
-
Hi
From what I have seen, if the NEW structure is done well (good architecture, good on-page optimization, better navigation, better keyword optimization in the new urls - its all an improvement from the old navigation) and you 301 everything corectly - you should see an improvement in rankings. Although this can take a week or two.
And of course submit a new xml sitemap. I also block the old pages/directories in robots.txt (this may be a little overkill but I do it anyway).
One extra tip is to just do a site:www.mydomain.com search in google to uncover any pages in their index you may not know about, or have overlooked and be sure to 301 those to the most relevant pages as well.
-Dan
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
-
Navigational Change
Morning Mozzers, Currently our website has 2 navigation bars. The top Navigation is the typical **Home - Products - Services - Contact - About **type thing The side navigation contains a link to top level categories, if a category is selected it shows the child categories
Web Design | | ATP
Eg. Socks
Shoes
Boots Cateogry level (Socks) Blue Socks
Red Socks
Green Socks The top navigation has drop-down menus built in whilst the side nav does not. Would it be worthwhile to edit the nav bars so that the top nav bar contains the categories with the child categories displaying in dropdown list when clicked. Top Nav
Home - Socks - Shoes - Boots when hovering over socks you would see Socks
Blue Socks
Red Socks
Green Socks My reasons for the change I could remove the thin content "Products page" It would add a link to the categories and sub categories from every page on the website as it would be in the top navigation bar i think this would help with ranking for some of the sub-category pages that struggle. It would allow me to remove the left nav bar on the homepage, moving more content above the fold and give the website a more modern feel. What do you think? Is would this be a positive or negative change?0 -
Brainstorm for a Car Classifieds website. Would you guys mind help me brainstorm?
Hey Mozers... Would you guys mind help me brainstorm? My client contact me and he wants to build a car classified kind of website for Utah. He wants to make the website from scratch, he has a pretty good budget and plan on using online marketing together with traditional marketing. If you were building your own car classifieds sites and budget was not a problem what would you include in your site? (ex: responsive, native ios app, blog, free tool for tell the user the value their car, etc) How would you do the online marketing? Which car Classified site do you like? why? Thanks Felipe
Web Design | | Felip30 -
Can anyone recommend me a good wordpress website designer for local services website?
Hi all,
Web Design | | chanel27
Does anyone know of any good wordpress SEO designer? I am looking to build some sites on:
Aircon Services
Laundry Services
Carpet Cleaning etc The wordpress must be able to easily add articles from time to time like this HTML site:
http://www.airconservices.com.sg/articles.html Appreciate you help!0 -
What do YOU look for when reviewing technical website criteria?
Wanted to get everyone's thoughts on this. One of my clients was asking me what they thought of a certain website design company. They wanted to use this company because their designs were very beautiful but wanted to be sure that contracting them would be the right decision. After I made my formal review and recommendation I thought this might be a great topic of discussion for the amazing SEOMOZ community. So, what factors do you look at when determining which design firms are worth their weight?
Web Design | | JusinDuff0 -
Where should I spend Money on my website?
My website is www.capitolshine.com what do you think? Where should I spend money to enhance SEO search results? I do have a limited budget but the company is growing quickly and I might have more funds to invest in a few months. Where should I spend money now (less than $500 per month) and where should I spend money in the future? I am afraid the person who coded my website wasn't well versed on SEO. There also might be coding errors. I'm trying to work through the errors myself via the repots from SEOmoz.
Web Design | | CapitolShine0 -
Are links from main page to inner pages will affect on ranking?
About 3 weeks ago I converted index.html to index.php. Both are 301 redirect to main url. Also I have about 70 links on main page pointing to internal pages. The Website is about 11 years old,and was on active link building . Is this conversion from html to php and also 70 links pointing to inner pages will affect on ranking?Since all links are passing juice to inner pages.
Web Design | | LosAngelesLimo0 -
Does File Compression software on a website benefit SEO?
Hi all. Should we be using File Compression software on our website files for SEO benefit? If so, do you like Deflate or gzip? Thank you for your help! Jay
Web Design | | theideapeople0 -
Any discussions on the actual web page design and how it might affect SEO?
Are there any links to previous discussions or tips, techniques for how creative design has any impact on seo??
Web Design | | theideapeople1