I’ve only done an entire site all in one go one time, and it was on a decent sized site. Took a few weeks for everything to switch over in the index, but I didn’t see any negative consequences.

http://www.seoconsultants.com/s/e/o/c/o/n/s/u/l/t/a/n/t/s/d/i/r/e/c/t/o/r/y/

Jill had a great point regarding the internal linking structure in relation to page rank and what not. Totally true.

People often mistake a “flat architecture” with having ZERO directories. Maybe you should elaborate on that concept for everyone out there.

While reading this article I was struck with the thought that SEOs and their clients could use a dose of copywriting courses to understand how to base their URL structure.

(Clean, crisp, and attention grabbing = Good … Keyword-Stuff Mumbo Jumbo = Bad)

Hope Ireland was a blast…sorry you had to refuse a beer for the first time in your life!

You can have a URL that appears to be 10 directories deep, but if it’s linked in the main nav. to and from every other page of the site, it will likely have the same PR as one in the root linked the same way.

Looks like Ireland was a blast, I’ve wanted to get over there for years. We’re seeing this with many client sites as well, but I’m not willing to give the developers as much credit as you with regard to trying to maximize Toolbar PR. I’ve had the pleasure of working with some devs recently who just don’t have a clue what URL structure is. They’re not trying to take advantage of a PR glitch, they’re just trying to do as little work as possible in the process of reselling some POS template site that they sell to unsuspecting clients.

Anyway, the same issue is the result. With hundreds and hundreds of files in the root we face the daunting task of adding structure if we want to stay sane, yet we are concerned with value evaporation with the implementation of 301s.

This might seem like a silly set of questions, but I’ll ask anyway. To try and avoid that evaporation (rankings loss), would you consider creating a duplicate content issue with the implementation of a solid URL structure while leaving the original page in place and then inserting a canonical tag on the original page page to solve the dupe issue?

Do you have a feel for whether the canonical tag evaporates more, less, equivalent juice than a 301?

Obviously, this would only be useful if the canonical method had less negative affect on rankings for a page.

I’ve been doing a lot more small-business consulting in the past couple of years, and I’m amazed how much overoptimizing I see. People hear one SEO tip (usually outdated and with no context) and blow it completely out of proportion, basing their entire site around it. Subtlety is completely lost on them.