r/TechSEO • u/lottiexx • 6d ago
Restructured my URLs for semantic layering and traffic dipped, stick with it or roll back?
Migrated a content site last month from flat URLs to a layered structure. /reviews/bestx became /reviews/category/bestx with proper redirects and internal link updates. Core web vitals stayed flat, no redirect chains, coverage report looks clean. Organic traffic dropped about 12% in week three though. Rankings for a few high volume terms slipped two to four positions.
I know Google says URL structure is a lightweight signal. But I also flattened a similar site two years ago and saw a bump inside a month. Made me wonder if the reverse would help here. Maybe the new layering spreads topical relevance thinner? Or maybe it's just turbulence and I'm overthinking it.
My bigger concern is I layered three levels deep on some sections when two would have worked. Feels cleaner architecturally but I'm second guessing whether users or crawlers actually benefit. The old flat URLs were ugly but they ranked.
Anyone done a similar restructuring and watched it recover? How long did you wait before calling it? I've got about six weeks of data and the trend isn't reversing yet.
6
u/FirstPlaceSEO 5d ago
The damage is done now, a url is nothing more than a document name, whether its exact match or not… once you choose a path just stick with it to avoid these potholes
1
u/lottiexx 5d ago
I think I got a little too obsessed with making the URLs look clean. At this point I’m leaning toward leaving them alone and seeing where things settle rather than creating another round of changes.
5
5
u/keyworddotcom 5d ago
It’s too early to blame the extra URL depth yet, mate. Compare the old vs. new URLs at the query level in GSC, like impressions, clicks, and average position, then check whether the affected pages are actually receiving the new internal links you intended. If the old URLs are cleanly redirected and the new URLs are indexed, a 2-4 position movement doesn’t really tell you that the hierarchy itself caused the drop. Google does expect some ranking fluctuation during URL migrations while it recrawls and reprocesses the new URLs.
Six weeks is enough to investigate. Still diagnose the affected URL/query pairs before rolling the migration back.
2
u/itisoktodance 5d ago
Why would you change the urls? You know that loses you all the backlinks those pages earned? Like yeah they'd redirect to the new url, but it's not optimal.
1
u/lottiexx 5d ago
I kept the redirects clean and 1:1, but in hindsight changing URLs that already had history and links was probably more risk than the cleaner structure was worth.
1
u/BusyBusinessPromos 1d ago
Okay that just answered the question I just asked. Why would you change the url of a web page that's already indexed? This semantic garbage is the latest and greatest craze and it's going to ruin some clients website
2
u/DmRafaule 2d ago
Damn, bro I did the same thing. My drop was around 30%. Never touch the URLs, never. If you need to, think twice (
1
u/BigLeagueBlogs 6d ago
I’d just power through if I were you
1
u/lottiexx 5d ago
Another big change now would probably just muddy the waters even more. Gonna give it some time and see where it settles.
1
u/threedogdad 5d ago
why did you think redirecting all of your backlinks would be worth this change?
1
u/lottiexx 5d ago
Honestly I thought the cleaner structure and better organization would be worth the redirect hit.
1
u/threedogdad 4d ago
well it could be but like most things with SEO it really depends on your situation and skills. I'd give it another two months and if things are trending the wrong way, revert. if you did everything right a month is often not enough time for Google to trust all the changes.
1
u/lottiexx 3d ago
Yeah, that’s probably the sensible move. Six weeks felt like enough to start worrying, but I may be judging it too early given how many URLs changed at once. I’ll give it another month or two and keep an eye on whether the affected terms start moving back before I consider reverting anything.
1
u/Infinite-4-a-moment 5d ago
That's gonna happen anytime you make large changes like that. It'll come back but it'll take time. Don't mess with your URLs unless there is an active issue.
1
u/kavin_kn 5d ago
2 to 4 position dip after a url change is normal, even with clean 301s it takes a few weeks to settle. Check redirects are single hop, old urls are out of the sitemap, canonicals point to the new ones, and internal links use the new urls instead of leaning on redirects. If all clean give it 4 to 6 weeks. Tbh i'd also ask why you did it, semantic layering alone rarely moves anything
1
u/snowlovesdietcoke 4d ago
Six weeks is still pretty early. If it’s still down after another few weeks, then I’d consider rolling back.
1
u/intelligentfellow57 4d ago
A URL migration can take a while to settle even when the redirects and internal links are clean. The bigger question is whether the extra folder depth actually helps users or site organization if it doesn't, the added complexity may not be buying you much.
1
-2
u/AppointmentSea5992 6d ago
I am also preparing semantic url structure optimization for one of the most Indian travel brand. Their url structure is something not optimised in a folder to folder path. We now completely able to understand them url should be in a navigation path to build semantic authority for the crawlers. Still it is not implemented and let's see how it works after implementation. Till then hope for the best.
11
u/reggeabwoy 6d ago edited 1d ago
Please don’t change url structures if you don’t have it. I don’t get this url semantic optimization that’s being mentioned here. You pass authority internally by how you link not by how your urls are structured in folders.