Menu Layout vs Content Hierarchy

[nwalker]

This is probably a silly question, but i'll ask anyway.

I have a content hierarchy for my site, that I have somewhat replicated in how i display the content in my menus.

I set all that up when the site first launched but now want to display the content in my menus differently - have different categories and drop downs.

Would re-ordering the content in the menus have a negative impact on SEO? - even though I'm improving the user experience (making it easier for people to find stuff)

Can I get away with leaving the content hierarchy as it is, or would I need to change it to reflect how I display the content in the menus?

I have a sitemap, so assume google uses that to navigate around my content rather than the menus I display to users?

Cheers
Neil

[gm2891]

Re-ordering won't couse any probs, if you keep the same amount of internal links pointing to these pages. You can see the number in your Search Console on your right hand site under the Links tab -- Top Linked Pages. Right at the top should be your most important page.

For example, if you see the first in that list is you Live Casinos page with 100 internal links pointing to it, and it currently ranks #1, but after re-ordering a number of links become less, your ranking for that page will certainly drop. Because your telling Google that this pages is not important anymore, but instead there is another one. It's just my experience, but there should be more about this on Matthew Woodward's site.

If i was you i would do it a bit by bit to see what happens. Also, i would use some precise keyword tracking tool, Seranking for example, to see if there're any negative changes with my main keyword for that page while i'm shuffling these things around.