SEO: ToDo list when changing your site's URL structure

Changing the URL structure for your site is not recommended, but sometimes it is necessary. The motifs may vary, but from time to time this kind of things happen. The most important thing to remember when dealing with something like this is: do it as rarely as possible, if it is possible never do it. Search engines does not like this kind of changing (the site must be indexed all over again, duplicate content may occur, the ranking of the site could drop), especially if it is done often, and the targeted backlinks may be lost because of it. If your site is already big (for example: a blog or a newspaper site) it can take some time to make a full recovery.

A URL will typically be indexed within a day (it depends of how often the crawlers will come to your site: it can vary from a few hours to a few days), but this doesn’t mean that every URL submitted will be indexed. Once a page has been crawled the search engine will evaluate whether or not a URL belongs in their index.

Make sure you are changing the current URL structure to something better

Switch from a dynamic URL structure to a static friendly URL structure

The dynamic URL structure looks like this: http://www.supravirtual.ro/index.php?category=4&news=1 and the content of the accessed page will vary depending of the indexed URL. This type of URL is NOT a friendly URL and it can create problems like duplicate content or split your link value.

The static URL structure looks like this: http://www.supravirtual.ro/web-design/joomla1.7-release, and the content would be identical with the previous dynamic URL (if they would be real URLs) because the category number 4 was replaced with it's value "web-design" and the news number 1 with the value "joomla1.7-release". This URL is better than the previous one because it's readable both by humans and spiders and it is easier to access.

Keep the current URL structure just as it is

... when your site is already ranking really well and the URLs are fine, but they are not just perfect. There are cases when the quality of your URLs can be improved, but the job should not be done because the effects in time can make your site drop in the search engines results list and ranking. The long time effects can be good, but the short and medium time effect can be a mess.

When you are not sure about the quality of your URLs you can always ask the SEO experts and do as they say. Their expertise will tell you if your case deserve changing the URL structure.

Redirect old URLs to new ones using 301 redirect

The 301 redirect tells the search engine that you have permanently changed the location of the URL, you should use this after changing the URL structure.

Keep in mind that the links you have applied 301 redirect will lose some of the link value, but if you don't do this your site ranking can drop like a rock on the bottom of the lake: you will loose all the link values of the old links.

Update the XML sitemap and resubmit it

In the case you are not generating the XML sitemap every time you add a new article on your site (in this case everything is automatic and you only have to change the URL condition when creating and recording an URL to the database then applying the 301 redirect to the old URL) you should update the XML sitemap and resubmit it to the search engines through the webmasters tools accounts (all major search engines have such tools).

This will only help the re-index your site faster and you'll get your ranking back faster.

Update all the internal links and the HTML sitemap

Always assure yourselves that the internal links and the HTML sitemap are updated. You can generate some links and put them in the database, but there can be a lot of links that are hard-coded (depending of the web designer and what tools he used to create your site) and the script must be also checked and changed in this case.

Try not to use 301 redirect all over your site when changing the URL structure. That can create visitors confusion (they can found themselves in other places then they thought they were) and it will maintain the internal link values.

The sitemap I am telling you about is different than the XML sitemap and it on site. It is a very useful tool if you want a human or a spider to parse your site faster, but that's the subject for another article.