Just lost half our traffic
We decided to change all our URLs at www.bitcompare.net for scalability reasons. We had a choice of continuing to do redirections or start from scratch. We had already done 3-4 redirects on our URLs and decided to start from scratch.
We knew we'd probably take an SEO hit, but we're talking about a 50% reduction in a matter of days. It could get worse.
I just hope this will pay off in the long-term now that we have better quality URLs that can scale.
Let's see...
Changing URLs is a risky business from an SEO perspective. Permanent 301 redirects are the best way to handle these with the least impact on ranking power. I know you already had a lot of prior redirects, but it might be worth setting up one final 301 redirect until the indexing is complete. Moz has a good guide on best SEO practices for redirects.
Search Engine Journal also has an article about whether changing URL structure is worth it. In this article, there's a quote from John Mueller at Google from an old Reddit thread that says:
Hopefully you can at least get some 301 redirects in place one last time to get some of your SEO juice back! The ship will usually right itself in a few weeks if you follow the best practices.
You'll be fine.
Are you planning a link building campaign to make up for the lost links?