Really great video, thank you!

Hi, I am looking through my site structure and I have a lot of pages left over from the days of article keywords.  Probably 7 or 8 years ago, someone sold my husband on article key word pages.  I have slowly gotten rid of a lot of them as they have fallen out out of the ranks.  I would like to get rid of the rest, probably 5 or 6 pages.  Will it hurt my rankings to delete pages and redirect them?  My customers really like the simplicity of our site and I want to keep it that way, plus clean up flags that Moz is telling me is a problem. I think its easier to keep less pages top notch than have to worry with a lot of them.  Especially since my customers aren't viewing them.

Thanks in advance!

Thank you!  I do plan to keep the internal linking the same, except the URL will change of course.  The site structure is staying the same, except the blog will be moving to the root directory instead of being in a sub directory.

Thanks for the advice on the XML sitemap!

Good to know!  Most of my searches are very specific, so I would say they are long-tail keywords.

Thank you, this is also very helpful!  I've never used Screaming Frog SEO Spider, so I will look into this!  As for scheduling, that's why I am doing this in January.  We are a tourism business, so we will peak in Feb / Mar.  I'm hoping that 4-6 weeks will be enough to bounce back if we drop any.  I do run Google PPC as well, so if it does drop, I'll have to up my PPC campaign.  How long does it usually take to settle back out?

Thank you!  That is very helpful.  I will test the 301s!  And thanks for letting me know to expect a 15% loss.  Will that come back over time?  I don't even want to lose one spot!  Haha!

I am in the process of having a wordpress site developed to replace my current HTML site. (I currently have my website in html and a blog in wordpress in a sub directory).  I am doing this in phases to try and preserve as much of my good rankings as possible.  My first phase is to replicate my site with the exact same pages, meta data, and site structure.  I'm hoping that google will see this as not much change and not change my rankings for the worse.  I also made it a goal that my site speed tests be at least equal to what they are now. We will have to 301 all of the URLs however since it will be going from /example.html to /example.  I believe my blog will also need to move into the root directory as well, so I need to 301 all of those pages.

I plan to wait a couple months for Phase 2.  Phase 2 involves replacing old content (photo galleries), and introducing new content (virtual tours, videos, new pages, etc.) One of my reasons for moving to wordpress is to keep up with current trends a little easier since I have very little time.  (I am owner, website maintainer, SEO - all on my own).

My question here is three parts.  1. Do you think this strategy will work to preserve my current rankings? 2. Do you have any lessons learned or advice to share with me to make this as smooth as possible? 3. Do I really need to wait to add new content?  I might get antsy and want to do it sooner!  

Thank you in advance!

The official address of the restaurant, store, and marina is 505 Glen Cheek Dr. However, if you plug 500 Glen Cheek Dr into a GPS or Google Maps, it takes you to about the same place. The dropped pin actually looks like it is in the water a little.  I don't think anyone else is officially using this address. Although, some of the other charters do what we do.  Eventually, they could end up changing just because they notice that we did.

I have the same feeling you do... I feel like I should wait.  Plus, if I made an address change, it would be a ton of work.  And I would never be able to truly change all of the citations.

Ugh!!!  It really is that.  I did a lot of searches and each time a different fishing charter comes up for 505 Glen Cheek Dr.  This is so aggravating.  Our marina has the most hard core competitors... actually the best fishing charters there are in the area. Plus, there is a party boat at that address and since they are so large, they can afford a good SEO. The other marinas don't have as much competitiveness, so Google really isn't showing "the best" results to their searchers.  How do we get this feedback to Google?  This is clearly a BAD idea!  There are so many businesses that share a building or strip... this really is unfair to any business that shares an address. This is our family business and how we feed our family and our captain's families. These changes really stress me out.  

Miriam,

It really looks like Google is only picking ONE person from each address to display.  This makes me wonder if I should take the painstaking task of changing my address slightly.  For instance, people can still find me if they type in 500 Glen Cheek Drive versus 505 Glen Cheek Drive.  Since we don't receive mail at the marine (our office is at home), then I only need it for driving directions.  Of course, I can only change the ones I created. There are no doubt a ton of citations that I didn't create with my address on them.  So then that might be worse because then Google will see 2 addresses. What do you think?

Thank you,

Amber

Thank you  I'll stick with writing my own code for now.  Thanks for responding!  I am really trying to understand all of this and improve my SEO.  I'm good at making a lovely website... just not so good at getting it to rank.

Really great video, thank you!

Thank you!  I do plan to keep the internal linking the same, except the URL will change of course.  The site structure is staying the same, except the blog will be moving to the root directory instead of being in a sub directory.

Thanks for the advice on the XML sitemap!

I am in the process of having a wordpress site developed to replace my current HTML site. (I currently have my website in html and a blog in wordpress in a sub directory).  I am doing this in phases to try and preserve as much of my good rankings as possible.  My first phase is to replicate my site with the exact same pages, meta data, and site structure.  I'm hoping that google will see this as not much change and not change my rankings for the worse.  I also made it a goal that my site speed tests be at least equal to what they are now. We will have to 301 all of the URLs however since it will be going from /example.html to /example.  I believe my blog will also need to move into the root directory as well, so I need to 301 all of those pages.

I plan to wait a couple months for Phase 2.  Phase 2 involves replacing old content (photo galleries), and introducing new content (virtual tours, videos, new pages, etc.) One of my reasons for moving to wordpress is to keep up with current trends a little easier since I have very little time.  (I am owner, website maintainer, SEO - all on my own).

My question here is three parts.  1. Do you think this strategy will work to preserve my current rankings? 2. Do you have any lessons learned or advice to share with me to make this as smooth as possible? 3. Do I really need to wait to add new content?  I might get antsy and want to do it sooner!  

Thank you in advance!