What is the best way to change your sites folder structure?

[Maximise]

Hi,

Our site was originally created with a very flat folder structure  - most of the pages are at the top level. Because we will adding more content I want to tidy up the structure first. I just wanted to check what the best way to go about this was. Is it best to:

1. First configure all the new 301 redirects to point to the new pages, while leaving the actual links on our site pointing to the old pages. Then changing the links on the site after a few weeks.

2. Configure the redirects and change the actual links on my website at the same time to point to the new locations.

My thinking that if I go with option 1 route then I will give Google a chance to process all the redirects and change the locations in their index before I start pointing them to the new locations. But does it make any difference? What is the best wat to go about making this sort of change to minimize any loss in rankings, page rank etc?

Thanks for the help.

[ReneReinholdt]

definitely number 2.. if you leave the links, then your have conflicting information for Google. 1 saying it's been moved over here and 1 saying everything has is still where it use to be.

[Theo-NL]

My gut feeling says #2. I'll spend the rest of this post thinking out loud why I think that one is there better option (though I don't think there is actually a 'wrong' and a 'good' option here, both have their advantages en disadvantages).

• Both your visitors and the search engines will stop visiting the old URLs as fast as possible (saving you bandwidth on the redirects).

• Less 'code overhead' regarding cases such as 'did I change that one already?'

• You are treating search engine robots and human visitors equally

Love to see what others have to say about this!

[Aftermath_SEO]

This is something I am considering doing as well with my site. I would really like to change to folder structure around. The biggest issue is some of my inner pages are ranking well in the SERPS and I want to continue that success even after the switch is done.

[RyanKent]

Cyklop Studio is correct. Definitely the second option.

301 your pages, change all links, then crawl your site so you can find any links you missed.

Imagine for a moment you moved to a new home. You go to the post office and forward your mail to the new home (i.e. a 301). Would you still keep asking everyone to send your mail to your old home (i.e. keep the old links)? No. You would update everyone you can, then as you notice forwarded mail you can contact those people or businesses you missed and alert them to your new address.