How would restructuring the navigation of my website affect my rankings?

[deuce1s]

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?

[deuce1s]

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.

[evolvingSEO]

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