29 replies to this topic

[weightlossforall.com]

Hi
will having 2 identical pages on my site affect ranking in google when it next spiders the site?
I have recently changed a page file name but kept the old one because it brings in some traffic and ranks ok in google. So now there are 2 identical pages with different extention names. I did it because the hew name is better to target for better ranking. However I need to find out how I go about replacing the new one for the old page. If I just delete the old page then when someone clicks on it from google it will come up page not found. I was going to leave them both and hope the engines just rank the new one higher due to its targeted file name.
Does anyone know if this would this be ok?

Thank you for any help in advance!
Wayne

[SearchRank]

Welcome to the forum Wayne!

The best thing to do if you can is to create a custom error page and then delete the obsolete page. That way if the old page draws a visitor from a search engine, they will land on your custom error page and you will not lose a visitor to an ugly ol' 404 error screen. You will have to check with your hosting company to see if this is something that is available to you.

If custom error pages are not an option, then you may want to change the obsolete file to a blank page and use a meta refresh tag set at 0 seconds, redirecting the user to the new page. Then you can monitor your server's log file or traffic reports to see if anyone is finding that page. Eventually the search engines will drop the obsolete page and you can kill it.

It is not recommended to have pages with duplicate content though. If you do, most search engines will probably just drop one or the other or could drop both. Search engines these days are pretty good at recognizing duplicate content.

That's my opinion. Good luck with it!

[torka]

Depending on your hosting situation, you may also be able to set up a "permanent redirect" using an htaccess file. This would automatically route anybody (including search engine spiders) that came looking for the old file to the new file. It all happens on the server before the content is ever served, so you could delete the old file -- thus, no duplicate content! -- and the spiders will note that it's a permanent redirect and start indexing the new page in place of the old.

This will work with an Apache server. I believe there's something similar that can be done with IIS, but I don't know what it is right off the top of my head. And I have no clue about any other servers...

HTH!

--Torka

[awall19]

I am assuming the old page had incoming links to it from your web site? If it had incoming links from your site (and no external) you can simply relink the pages that linked to the old page to the new page you just made.

On the old page you can have it redirect to the new page set to 0 seconds. If you are worried about search engine penalties you can also place a "noindex, nofollow" meta tag on the old page.

[BroadBand Universe]

I would make subtle changes in Title, alt tags, headers and body text just enough to make the content unique to each of these pages. We do this all the time. This should help you retain
valuable traffic.

I believe the other ideas mentioned will result in the page getting deleted from the Google index , not a good thing IMHO.


Craig

[torka]

As I understand it, using the 301 permanent redirect will result in the old page being substituted with the new page. People occasionally report a glitch or two as the spiders figure it out, but that can happen pretty much any time you make a change to a page or for no discernable reason whatsoever, from what I can tell. For anyone who clicks on a link to the old page, they'll be automagically taken to the new one, and the spiders should figure it out fairly quickly.

I'm given to understand that a 301 permanent redirect is the preferred solution in a situation such as this. YMMV, of course.

--Torka

[SearchRank]

I would make subtle changes in Title, alt tags, headers and body text just enough to make the content unique to each of these pages.  We do this all the time. This should help you retain valuable traffic. 

I believe the other ideas mentioned will result in the page getting deleted from the Google index , not a good thing IMHO.

If the two pages do not serve unique purposes and are only slightly different from each other, then this is nothing more than spam.

I believe Wayne's original concern was that he did not want people to click on a listing to the old page from a search engine and get the old ugly 404 error page. That is where deleting the page and then incorporating either a custom error page and/or a 301 permanent redirect will serve the purpose. To only slightly change a few things would still leave two near identical pages on the site which could cause a search engine who picks up on this to list one or the other or just remove both of them.

[weightlossforall.com]

Thats right searchrank, I didn't want the error to come up when surfers click from S.E. So

What I've done now is simply deleted all info from old page and placed a "sorry but this page has moved" with a link to new page.

Will the engines be able to spider these pages eventually deleting the old page as it has no valuable content anymore, then replace it with new one and provide a better ranking because it has a targeted keyword in the file name?

The old page is
www.weightlossforall.com/factors.htm
the page is about factors that influence our metabolic rate but because of lack in S.E experience I named it factors so i would remember what article was about. The new page is now called "metabolism.htm" because this is a highly searched keyword.

In google I got good ranking for the old page with term "how to increase metabolic rate" but "metabolism" is better keyword and didn't rank anywhere. I'm hoping changing filename will help me gain that high ranking for both above terms

[SearchRank]

You probably do not have the ability to create a custom error page or set up a 301 redirect so what I would suggest instead of the page that says "sorry but this page has moved" is just to create a blank page with a meta refresh tag directing the user to the new page.

The html in its entirety would look like this:

<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; URL=http://www.weightlossforall.com/metabolism.htm">
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>

Eventually the SEs will most likely drop the page because it redirects and there is nothing there and you retain the visitor.

[weightlossforall.com]

OK searchrank that sounds great. I've just done what you suggested but before I publish:

When I "preview the page" in Front page I get a blank white page with -

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; URL=http://www.weightlossforall.com/metabolism.htm>

-printed at the top.
Is this right?

Do i need to keep anything else on the page like the same theme design or any links, navigation etc on the page so the S.E's can spider other pages from this page?

Do you think I will I get penalised for this in the S.Engines like google?

Sorry for all the questions. And thanks for all the great advice
Wayne

[SearchRank]

Make sure you place the

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; URL=http://www.weightlossforall.com/metabolism.htm>

in between the <head> and </head> tags. You should not see anything on the page, just a blank page. You have probably placed the meta refresh tag outside the head tags.

[weightlossforall.com]

Just published it and its not working. The page just displays

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; URL=http://www.weightlossforall.com/metabolism.htm>

[Jill]

You could also simply exclude the old page from getting spidered, using the robots.txt exclusion.

Jill

[Lorelle]

The old page ... I named it factors so i would remember what article was about. The new page is now called "metabolism.htm" because this is a highly searched keyword.

I think the most important thing is not being said here...

It won't do any good to simply change the filename if you don't change what your page is about. I would just rewrite the Title tag & copy etc. and leave the filename alone.

But since you've decided to use a redirect, and already blanked out the old page, here's why your meta refresh isn't working:

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; URL=http://www.weightlossforall.com/metabolism.htm>

1. You're missing the endquote mark " before the >

2. In order to insert this code, you need to switch to HTML View (the tab at the bottom in FrontPage) and paste it somewhere before the </head> tag.

[weightlossforall.com]

how do I use the robots.txt?

Do I place some coding in the old page and forget about the redirect code that I tried earlier?