We are planning to make a new site using same domain. We would like to use same URLs structure on our new and updated site. We don't want to lose ranking in search engines.
Is it odd to use the old URL structure on a new site or we should redirect old URLs to a new and preferred structure?
When company's move to a new domain, the usual way that it is done is to keep the same URL structure of the same previous domain.
The reason for this is that 301 redirecting all of the previous urls to the new one is very easy.
Example:
example.com/dir/topic/pagename -> example.net/dir/topic/pagename example.com/category/idea/page -> example.net/category/idea/page
The above 301 redirection structure is very easy to achieve. But if you try to redirect all of the previous URLs to completely new ones it might take an enormous amount of manual time to do so.
Example:
example.com/dir/topic/pagename -> example.net/pagename/newdirectory/thing example.com/category/idea/page -> example.net/datecategory/page/somethingelse
The above version is much more complicated than the first example.
301 redirects pass 90-100% of link juice and ranking value. Your site should still do very well by redirecting to the new domain and keeping your URL structure as long as you use 301.
