Changing URL Structure From Flat to Pyramid Theme

[k9byron]

Hello Mozzers,

I have an on-page SEO question regarding URL structure. A few months back we hired a full-time SEO person who is working on-page right now and she really wants us to completely re-due our URL restructure from a flat to pyramid style (example below).

Current URL structure / page title is:

Dog training Collars - K9electronics.com
http://www.k9electronics.com/dog-training-collars/

Small Dog training Collars - K9electronics.com
http://www.k9electronics.com/small-dog-training-collars/

Einstein ET-300TS Mini Dog Training Collar - K9electronics.com
http://www.k9electronics.com/einstein-et-300ts-mini-remote-dog-trainer.html

Suggested URL structure / page title change:

Quality Dog Training Collars - Lowest Price Guarantee - K9electronics
http://www.k9electronics.com/dog-training-collars/

Dog Training Collars - Small Dog - K9electronics.com
http://www.k9electronics.com/dog-training-collars/small-dog/

Einstein ET-300TS Mini - Dog Training Collars - K9electronics.com
http://www.k9electronics.com/dog-training-collars/small-dog/einstein-et-300ts-mini

I guess you could say we are the poster-boys for Google penalties and have received just about every penalty in the book. Panda, penguin algo penalties and a partial manual action for unnatural links. Several months ago we removed 1000's of in-bound links and had our manual action lifted a few months back and are now hovering around the top / mid 2nd page for all our big terms ...we used to be top 3 for everything.

As we were removing bad links, we also completely redesigned the site and removed lots of categories and products and 95% of all our old, low quality content and replaced it with new, high quality content. The site was really slooooow, so we optimized it and moved it to a big dedicated server and tripled page load time. Added rich snippets, Google authorship, increased our FB and other social presences and much more ...

I had also considered this URL structure change during the redesign because I had heard and read that it was good to do, but it required redirecting practically all our URL's which I know can hurt the site even more so then it already has been ...

Our SEO says that as it sits now, our pages are competing with each other and really seems to think this is going to improve our rankings a lot ...after several weeks. My question is, at this stage in the game, is it really going to help a lot and give us more benefit compared to the 301 redirect link juice loss? Any comments and/or suggestions are very much appreciated!

[ClaudioHeilborn]

Hi Byron

At a first glance at least, I would not agree with your new SEO. I definitely prefer your actual flat pyramid url scheme than this new high piramid url proposed.

Google will never read those deep new urls!

Maybe I would try to change your actual ones, but never hiding them three leves deep beneath earth...After undergoing such penalties I personally would not be so much afraid on making huge changes, and I would take the "risk" of changing them but do not hiding them!

Hope it helps to build a panorama.

Good luck

Cheers from a sunny winter in Spain

Claudio

[TammyWood]

I can see what your SEO person is saying, in creating a themed silo site structure. However, you can do this with virtual structural changes vs. UI changes. Also, if you are battling to get back on top less changes to what Google has already spidered the better. And I agree with Claudio as well, don't make it harder for Google to do their job.

Review your content to review cross linking abnormalities as well as missed opportunities in 'theming' your site structure and content.

Answer the question: Does this link from page a <-> page b useful to the reader / shopper and subsequently, the search engine.