You welcome. Good luck.

Hi Brent. Here are my thoughts, and I too have done my fair share of mergers and redesigns for URL migrations, etc.

• stick with a similar URL structure to H Corp through the migration (my normal process) but deviate from pretty much every best practice for structuring URLs with keywords, common sense and logic. Pro: follow my process (which has always worked in the past) Con: don't implement SEO/On-page best practices at this stage and wait for the site redesign to implement best practices (more work) Follow your process, especially if they are redesigning, that way you can advise on SEO/on-page during phase two. Doing it this way you are able to set expectations (this is key). If they know the risk, you might be able to advise them to migrate the websites during the redesign versus multiple times (advised option 3). We all know that the more redirects that occur, the more equity is diluted. Present the options, define the risk, provide your perspective, and let the client make their decision. Then implement <wink>, that's all we can do.</wink>
• Implement new URL structure now and deviate from my trusted process.
  If you have a proven process, I'd stick with it and just educate the client on the process and risk.

Do you see a third option? Third option is to advise them to wait, and migrate the sites during the redesign process. I think this is the cleanest, and smartest way to proceed. However, I appreciate when the client wants to do it, they want to do. So then you provide the options, present the risk.

Am I overthinking it? Nothing wrong with being thorough. Validating is key, and the more minds you reference, the better perspective you can gain.

Good luck.
~Amanda

Hi Chris.

As long as the new pages you are 301 redirecting are optimized for the same elements that you are 301ing you should be okay. A couple things you'll also want to do are, look at the backlink profile of the 301 page, and overtime, make it a point to update any external links pointing to the old URL to be updated with the New URL to ensure equity to the new page is maintained overtime, otherwise equity can begin to be lost. You can also use that exercise to request more search friendly (e.g. keyword you are targeting) in the hyper-text.

I would also advise to baseline what the old page is currently getting in existing traffic, so that you can monitor the transition. You might see a little dip while the search engines are reconnecting everything up, but in my experience. It'll all go back to normal as long as similar optimizations are maintained, e.g. folder depth, h1, title tag, content, updated backlink structure, alt-tags.

Hope that helps, holler if you have any other questions, or something is unclear.

~Amanda