Site Redesign Inconsistent Trailing Slash Issue

[GrouchyKids]

I'm looking at a site that has implemented trailing slashes inconsistently across multiple pages.

For instance:
http://www.examplesite.co.uk/ (WITH)
http://www.examplesite.co.uk/product-range (WITHOUT)
http://www.examplesite.co.uk/product (WITHOUT)
http://www.examplesite.co.uk/blog/ (WITH)
http://www.examplesite.co.uk/blog/blog-article/ (WITH)

The blog was created later in Wordpress which is one of the reasons why this issue exists.

Looking at the inbound links unsurprisingly the lions share go to the home page but lots of other pages have links as well, particularly the product pages, no to many to the blog pages.

This pattern is similar in terms of which pages rank, the home page ranks well for a variety of phrases, the product pages also do quite well.

I know that ideally the URL's should be identical to the existing site, or if you have to you should 301 redirect old to new.

The client wants to switch the whole site over to Wordpress which will be default implement a consistent URL structure across the board, thereby changing at least some of the URL's no matter what I do.

I remember a Matt Cutts video that stated that even a 301 redirect will loose a clicks worth of link juice see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Filv4pP-1nw

The existing site has a poor UX compared to the new proposed design so this should help us.

Has anyone got any experience with a similar issue or any advice about how best to proceed?

[davebuts]

Hi Justin,

Sounds like you already know what you're doing!

I would proceed with exactly what you have said and wouldn't be worried at all about the loss of authority between redirecting to a URL without a / to a URL with a /. The loss of authority will be almost insignificant and you will not lose your rankings or organic traffic from from doing this.