Should I 301 Poorly Worded URL's which are indexed and driving traffic

[guycampbell]

Hi,

I'm working on our sites structure and SEO at present and wondering when the benefit I may get from a well written URL, i.e

ourDomain / keyword or keyphrase .html

would be preferable to the downturn in traffic i may witness by 301 redirecting an existing, not as well structured, but indexed URL.

We have a number of odd looking URL's i.e

ourDomain / ourDomain_keyword_92.html

alongside some others that will have a keyword followed by 20 underscores in a long line...

My concern is although i would like to have a keyword or key phrase sitting on its own in a well targeted URL string I don't want to mess to much with pages that are driving say  2% or 3% of our traffic just because my OCD has kicked in....

Some further advice on strategies i could utilise would be great. My current thinking is that if a page is performing well then i should leave the URL alone. Then if I'm not 100% happy with the keyword or phrase it is targeting I could build another page to handle the new keyword / phrase with the aim of that moving up the rankings and eventually taking over from where the other page left off.

Any advice is much appreciated,

Guy

[RobertFisher]

Well, I think in many cases change is good. I understand your concern though.

I think redirecting the current url will be fine and you won't lose traffic. They are still clicking on the old url, and landing on the new. I don't think that will be too off putting for anyone based on experience.  We do 301's from totally different sites and still have the traffic when they land on a page. As well as that, you won't lose any link juice to speak of as the 301 will transfer 90% plus.

I would use the OurDomain.com/keyword or keyword-phrase as opposed to having the .html extension after it. And, dashes as opposed to underscores.

Best

Edit: Forgot your last paragraph. Be careful with adding pages of similar keywords like:

Purple Monkeys to Big Purple Monkeys, etc. You don't want to be so close that you impact one keyword while thinking you will move the other up. Remember that not every search is exact match. 
Look at where you are failing in conversions: Is it the ranking not bringing you traffic or is it you are getting impressions without click through (meta description maybe?) or is your traffic bouncing because your landing page sucks or is not answering their query.

Best