Changing my website's navigation. Will it have adverse effects on ranking in the SERPs?

[brianflannery]

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[NgEF]

Hi brianflannery,

I'm not sure if you've already gotten a response on this, but I actually just went through a similar situation recently. We changed the navigation structure of the site (e-commerce marketplace) significantly, such that previous category URLs that were already ranked (some no longer existed), were removed. I'm not sure how significant a change in your site's navigation you're intending to make, and whether it was as drastic as ours.

We definitely saw negative effects from the change in the site structure, but it lasted for about 2 weeks or so. Our site was really new, only 6 months old at that point, so it took us a significant amount of time to recover from the navigation structure change. Back then, while desperately searching for a solution, I found this article, it might come in handy for you too. Hope it helps!

http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/3707-SEO-Identifying-the-Impact-of-a-Site-Redesign

[brianflannery]

Yes its a drastic change in navigation and I took a dive in the SERPS.

I am still trying to figure out the cause of this.

Thanks for the article. It will come in use.