Mon 9 Jul 2007
Web Site Redesign And Avoiding Losing Page Rank
Posted by jsupport-user1 under How To , PersonalDigg This Entry , [11] Comments
Hello,
I’m sure the internet has changed quite a bit since you first unveiled your web site to the world. The technologies used to build web sites and internet presentations have also changed too. You may be thinking that the time is right to redesign your web site. A new look/ feel and fresh content will go far to better reflect your business services today. Make sure you have someone who understands search engine optimization involved with your project. This is very important for a web site redesign.
In the past it was possible to simply write code to display your pages properly in the few browsers available. Today if your web site enjoys any traffic that comes from the search engines, you want to keep it. This means that your REDESIGNED web site cannot have broken links that come from the search engines or dump all of your old site links to the home page. Doing so will impact your search engine ranking. This will cause your rank to drop. For some business this could have a serious financial impact.
You need to redirect all of your old pages to the new pages that have similar content. Often a web site is transitioned from a static HTML web site to a dynamically scripted web site like those coded with ASP, PHP, .net, Cold Fusion, Java to name a few server side scripting languages. Your old web site may have had links that looked like this:
http://www.example.com/folder/products.htm
or something similar. Your new site may simply have restructured how the pages are stored by changing the folder names or your web site is now dynamic. Either way you want your old web page links to be redirected to the new web page links. If you are running apache server you can use an htaccess file in the root of your public folder to preform the redirect of OLD to NEW. This is just one way to make use of htaccess files. Feel free to use your favorite search engine to find other htaccess tutorials for password protected folders or event URL rewriting.
How to use htaccess files with apache server for URL redirect
Create a plain text file named: .htaccess
in the root of your public folder. In this file you will use the following structure to create a redirect that tells the search engines that a permanent change to the old link has been made, meaning the old link is being redirected permanently. The format is action, error code, OLD URL, NEW URL. Each redirect is on its own line like this:
Redirect 301 /your_file_name.html http://www.example.com/index.php?a=12&b=39
Redirect 301 /file_name.htm http://www.example.com/index.php?a=657&b=354&c=234
If your OLD URL happened to have a space, %20, in the file name or folder name put the entire URL in double quotes like this:
Redirect 301 “/folder name/file name.htm” http://www.example.com/content/view/215/27/
This will allow the directive to be performed properly. With out double quote around the URL with a space it can cause an internal error 500 on the server. Often this error is associated with htaccess files the have invalid syntax.
Note:
- 301 is the error code for a permanent redirect
- The OLD URL starts with a forward slash
- The NEW URL is a fully qualified URL
- The new URL can also be on a different domain too.
That is all there is to it. Save your htaccess file and test it by access an old URL. It should redirect your browser without incident. Using the 301 error tells the search engines to update their index with the new URL.
Sincerely,
Mike
Mike,
This is what i’ve been looking for and works fine. However, the pagerank doesn’t initially transfer from the .html file to the .php, or is it a case of when its re-indexed the pagerank will appear on the .php page?
regards
Steve
Hi Steve,
You will not get any transfer of page rank. It is not the same page. However since you are telling them that it is a permanent move they will index and rank the new page/URL only.
Mike
Thanks for that Mike
I have a few sites I need to jig around a little, so I’ll do the mod on a couple pf pages and keep a check to see if the page rank comes back.
Also, I have a generated xml sitemap, should i update this with the .php pages, or just leave it to the redirect to give the info?
regards
Steve
Hi Steve,
Yes you site map should represent the actual links on you site. Of course if you don’t like the .php extension you can do something with apache mod_rewrite to make your .php look like .htm in the address bar.
Mike
Thanks Mike,
I have got it all sorted now.
Many thanks for you help
Regards
Steve
SEO Elite Review…
I have seen some crappy posts but this one really impresses me. Good work….
You made some good points there. I did a search on the topic and found most people will agree with your blog.
Can any one explain the problems (if any) of a 301 redirect of my domain
http://www.example.net/
to
http://example.net/default.aspx
instead of
http://example.net/
I know it makes no sense but my web designer made it that way!
Hi,
Your site does redirect as you describe. You need to use a different method called URL rewrite.
Mike
Love the post.
Thanks for sharing this group of lesson learned, you have added a few points that I need to go away and consider.