Website Re-launch and Maintaining Search Rankings - The Web Page

We certainly don't want to create 404s by renaming all the old pages to new ones. There are cases when you're going to want to retain remnants of the old site, but you have to change the web page's name. An example of this is when the website moves from a static website to one driven by an application language like ASP, PHP, or CFM. What do you do then?

Strategy 1 - Retain the web page under its old name, but give it the new design. Do not create duplicate content on your website by copying and pasting this content into the new website. Duplicate content is a mistake that can cost your website its rankings. Search engines frown upon duplicate content. Instead, create new content for the new website which accomplishes the same goals as the old content. In effect, you have two pages, with similar content.

Strategy 2 - Implement 301 Permanent Redirects on the old pages to redirect to the new pages. This is the preferred method. The 301 Permanent Redirect informs search engine spiders that the web page previously at this location has been 'Permanently' moved. In the case of Google, all PageRank will be moved over to the new page. In time the old web page will fade from the search engine indexes and be replaced by the new web page.

I have a few 301 scripts that can be pasted into the top of old web pages. Of course, these will only work if the web page is using the appropriate application language:

For Coldfusion:

<cfheader statuscode="301" statustext="Permanent Redirect">

<cfheader name="Location" value="http://www.yourwebsite.com/newdirectory/newpage.htm">

For ASP:

<%

Response.Status = "301 Moved Permanently"

Response.addheader "Location", "http://www.yourwebsite.com/newdirectory/newpage.htm"

Response.End

%>

For PHP:

<?php
header("HTTP/1.1 301");
header("Location:http://www.yourwebsite.com/newdirectory/newpage.htm");
?>

Apache server, you can add 301s to the the .htaccess file:

Redirect 301 / http://www.newsite.com/
Redirect 301 /olddirectory/ http://www.newsite.com/newdirectory/
Redirect 301 /olddirectory/oldpage.html http://www.newsite.com/newdirectory/newpage.html

Once you have implemented the redirects, you should check the headers to ensure they are sending 301 Permanent Redirects: http://www.webmaster.bham.ac.uk/headers/.

Unfortunately, if you have a completely static web page on an IIS server you only have one option I am aware of. Your web host can set up the IIS server to do a server-side 301 redirect. The hitch is that the 301s are only at the domain level (e.g.: http:www.olddomain.com --> http://www.newdomain.com). This is not too helpful when you just want to change your web page's name. Your options for static pages are:

1. Use Strategy 1; or,

2. Place a notice on the old web page that this page has moved to another location. Place a text link on the web page so the visitor and spider can find its way to the new location.

Whether you're using Strategy 1 or 2, once the new web pages are indexed and are doing well, it's time to work on flushing the old web pages from the search engines' indexes. To do this you can paste the following into the head of the old web pages:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow">

This informs the robot not to index this web page any longer. In time, the page should fade from the search results. Keep an eye on your logs to determine when these pages are no longer accessed and it's safe to archive them permanently.

Next: What about the In-bound Links to the Old Web Pages? >>
 

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