Changing Structure of Links... Yay or Nay?

[NikitaG]

Hello there,
My site: MigrationLawyers.co.za was made with no sub structure.
It has no categories, and no child pages, all the pages are simply added to the end of the URL.
Sometimes this results in a rather lengthy URL like:
**/Immigration-Permanent-Residence-Work-Permit-South-**Africa
I was hoping to arrange the pages a bit into a logical, parented structure that looks more like:
**/Immigration/Permanent-Residence/Work-Permit-South-**Africa I would have parented pages, making up the same pretty much URL

Now the Questions:
Is it worth it?
Will google read my parented URL with all the keywords, or only the page's keywords?
What should I expect to see from google?
Will my SERPs be all messed up?

I will, without doubt, 301 redirect all the old URLs to the new parented ones.

Any advice would be great,
Thanks,
Nikita

[Martijn_Scheijbeler]

Hi Nikita,

How many pages we're talking about for this site? If it's not to many (<50-100) I would say leave it like this, it probably wouldn't be worth the hustle to redirect the old pages to the new ones. As also the page urls will stay the same based on keywords I wouldn't waste my time on this for small sites. If we're talking about hundreds/ thousand of pages than it's another problem and I would say it could hurt the way Google gives you crawl budget.

[artdivision]

I agree with Martijn and based on what I see from your examples you should do with this one: **/Immigration/Permanent-Residence/Work-Permit-South-**Africa

In regards to your questions:
Is it worth it? - yes it does
Will google read my parented URL with all the keywords, or only the page's keywords? - Google will take into higher consideration the folder that is closer to your domain name. With your new structure I suspect you would promote the page with the "Immigration" keywords which includes "permanent residence" as one of the many services your "immigration" page includes. Same goes for your work permit. This is how google will see it while at the moment it sees one authoritative page which includes the whole keyword. As Martjin said it really depends in how many pages/services you got.
What should I expect to see from google? - I have witness slight improvement in rankings (+2-3 positions) after I Implemented url re-structuring and schema but I have mainly worked in property related web sites so not sure if this an exception or rule. Someone with an e-commerce web site (where there url structure is a must) could give us his insights in terms of improvements as in every single e-commerce site I have worked, I always made sure the url was structured properly from scratch so I do not have an insight in terms of "improving" rankings.
Will my SERPs be all messed up?  - Not messed up but you might end up with lots of 404. Make sure you set redirects from the old URLs to the new Ones. Again it depends the web site. From my experience I changed 4 in the past and only one popped loads of 404s but that was mainly due to a plug in that was displaying search results based on unique criteria, something I could not control.

Hope this helps!

[George.Fanucci]

In my own experience, good category names are very, very important. Have you prioritized your top 10 or 20 keyword search phrases? Those should be worked into your top level categories. I have recently seen reasonable benefits from redesigning categories and subcategories, and of course 301 redirecting popular old ones to the new ones diligently.