6 replies to this topic

[DJKay]

Hi,

I am in the process of thinking and planning a site reoptimization/creative refresh/redesign -- need to add new product information, vertical information, etc. Our site was well optimized when I first did it 4 years ago, and it has served us well, but its been dropping over the last year in terms of overall organic vs ppc traffic and my lead gen mix [organic vs paid] as been dropping as well. I know some things have changed, and now all my competitors our optimizing their sites (they never knew to do this until about a year and 1/2 ago).

I have a very well developed company media center with lots of great stuff 4 years worth of rss feeds, blogs, glossary, press releases, whitepapers, articles, audio and video podcasts and more. Right now, its not showing on the main nav bar. i.e., you have to click down to the about us section, then the media center section to get to it.

In actuality, the page mediacenter.htm is at the root directory level [another problem because I inherited it with a minimal folder structure and while we have cleaned it up some [have folders for article pdfs, audio podcasts, video podcasts, images, etc., we still have most of our files at the root directory level].

The media center has alot of great information in it and has really evolved over the last 4 years. I really want to have it on the primary nav because it will help users because it contains really good industry specific information. So, I am in favor of moving it up, but will I need to use a 301 permanent redirect if the page is located in the same place as the about us.htm page.

DJKay

[Jill]

DJKay, it has nothing to do with where the page/section is located in your server, but everything to do with how it's linked from within your site.

So simply pointing to the page that contains the info and the links to other pages with more info, in your main navigation that is linked to from every other page of the site will bring it up into a higher level within the hierarchy of your website and provide it with a whole lot more internal link popularity.

[K.S. Katz]

You might want to look at the overall internal linking structure of the site. Besides moving its position in the main navigation, you might also want to reference that section as text links in other pages throughout the site where it's appropriate.

[DJKay]

Jill,

it has nothing to do with where the page/section is located in your server, but everything to do with how it's linked from within your site.

So simply pointing to the page that contains the info and the links to other pages with more info, in your main navigation that is linked to from every other page of the site will bring it up into a higher level within the hierarchy of your website and provide it with a whole lot more internal link popularity.

Okay so your saying here that by moving it up, it will increase the media center's internal link popularity. Yes, I agree. And I think that what is what you mean by

it

.

I see now that I had more than one question, and was bringing up a few different things. Maybe I have confused some concepts here. I am asking will I need a 301 redirects when we move the page up? Everything I read says you use a 301 redirect when you are redirecting one page to another i.e. http://www.mydomain....riginalpage.htm is now permanently redirected to http://www.mydomain.com/newpage.htm . We are not changing the page url, we are just moving it up in the internal structure of the site. We are going to redesign the page to have a new look and feel, but the sections, content, links, Rss feeds are going to stay the same.

Most of the sites I have optimized I done have been from scratch. At the time, when I inherited this one, I optimized the content and the site as it was there. I had just started at my company, and it would have meant getting alot more resource time doing a major makeover [redirecting pages] and that was not possible then, so I have not had that much hands on use of the 301 redirect. That is why I am asking... so see, we are all still wet behind the ears in one way or another some of us more than others

K.S. Katz

That is a good idea and will incorporate into the plan.


Thanks in advance.

DJKay

[torka]

What I think Jill is saying (and I agree) is that you don't need to change the URLs of the pages at all. Just change the site navigation so the pages are accessible from where ever you want them to be. That way, you don't have to make any 301 redirects at all.

Google et.al. don't care about how you've physically arranged the pages on your site (i.e. your folder structure). They care about how the pages are linked together (i.e. your navigational structure). If you want to make a page more prominent or give it more weight, simply link to it at a higher level in your site navigation. You don't have to move it physically at all.

If you want to make the media center section more prominent, simply add a link in your top level site navigation to the media center category-level page. If you don't have a media center category-level page, create one and link the detail level pages to that, regardless of where each media center page resides in your physical file structure.

--Torka

[DJKay]

Hi Torka,


Thanks, yes, that is what I thought Jill was saying, and Yes, I was thinking that it probably did not matter to google where the page was located -- and I would not need to do a 301 redirect, I just wanted to confirm this.

I appreciate it.

DJKay

[Jill]

If you change the URL, then you need a 301. If you don't, you don't.

If you put it in to your main navigation, it will depend on your CMS as to whether you need to change it's URL as well. If you don't have to change it's URL to put it there, that's your best bet. But if you do, that's when you need to do the 301.