7 replies to this topic

[DennisG]

Hi everyone,

The company I am working for has asked me to optimize their site for them. No problem of course but by doing this it will be necessary to create new folder names and such, which thus means that some files will be moved. I think the best way to prevent 404 errors or duplicate content is to use the .htaccess file and set-up some 301 re-directs. Will the code below do the trick or do I need to add more information? I have never set-up a 301 before so I wanted to be sure. I've done a search but couldn't find anything on this forum. Thanks in advance!

Options -Indexes

redirect 301 /products/index.html http://www.mydomain.com/optimized_name/index.html

redirect 301 /products/1/index.html http://www.mydomain.com/optimized_name/1/index.html

Do I need to add a space between each line? Should I keep the existing files or remove them?

[burgeltz]

Looks good, Dennis.

No space is required between lines. It doesn't matter whether you keep the existing files, since the server redirect will keep anyone from reaching them.

[Randy]

I echo Tom's comments. It looks good Dennis.

One additional thought that may save you some time and trouble.

If the basic gist is that you're going to be changing the directory structure but the page filenames are going to remain constant you may be able to do something like:

redirect 301 /products/ http://www.mydomain.com/optimized_name/

redirect 301 /products/1/ http://www.mydomain.com/optimized_name/1/

That the above will do, in one fell swoop, is to redirect /products/1/index.html to /optimize_name/1/index.html and also redirect /products/1/otherpage.html to /optimized_name/1/otherpage.html

In other words, if your filenames are going to remain constant you can redirect entire directories to the new directory, no matter what the actual filename is.

Did that make sense?

[Scottie]

it will be necessary to create new folder names and such

I would ask why you are creating keyword folder names in the first place... it's a lot of trouble for very little benefit as far as I know. All that time spent reorganzing and creating redirects could be spent writing content and figuring out a good linking strategy.

[Ron Carnell]

The more important question here, I think, is why you want to use a 301?

Using keyword-rich directories and filenames is going to increase your relevancy a smidgeon or two. When creating new pages, it's definitely worth doing. However, in my opinion, those keyword-rich URL's are not going to help you nearly as much as moving existing pages is likely to hurt you. That's especially true in the short term, because the site will take a hit for at least a month, possibly two, while Google updates its index. It will drop all your redirected pages, first, then latter add the new destination pages. In the long term, the advantage might shift, especially if you can anticipate deep links with no anchor text (in which case the keywords in the URL become important), but it probably won't shift enough to warrant either the risk or the investment in time.

In short, I think there are better ways to optimize, less dangerous ways to optimize, and almost certainly more productive ways to spend your time.

<edit>LOL. Okay, what Scottie managed to say much more succinctly while I was still typing. </edit>

[DennisG]

Thanks for all the replies. I understand what you are all saying but the problem currently is is that the HTML files are almost all in seperate directories (don't ask my why this was done). So we basically have a structure like

/html/wigs/wigs.html and
/html/morewigs/morewigs.html
/html/product/product.html
/html/help/help.html
You get the idea...

Currently all the pages on our site (about 60) are spidered by Google but the problem is is that not one page is optimized correctly. So I thought it would be better to re-create every single page and since I'm at it, also re-create the site structure. I know it won't make a huge difference for our serp ranking but it also gives us a better overview of the site.

What do you think? Should I leave it alone? I've checked the other search engines and most of them only see the first page of our website.

Thanks again for the replies, appreciate them a lot!
DennisG

[Scottie]

Hi Dennis-

If you are reorganizing the site from the ground up, it makes sense to do it right. If it were me, I'd probably just put up a custom 404 error page with a sitemap on it and let the people and engines follow that to find the newly reorganized pages rather than try to write a 301 from one specific page to the new page.

It sounds like you have bigger problems than URL structure though if the search engine spiders never make it past the home page. Do you know why that is happening?

[DennisG]

Hi Scottie,

Thanks for the reply. I'm thinking about alternative solutions but I think 301 is the way to go since only a few files will be moved (about 15) but I'll keep your suggestion in mind Thanks again for the help everyone, appreciate it a lot!

DennisG