Reputation:
i am creating a revised website for a firm that has an existing website. Many of the pages are the same topic and text with a new design. Should i use the same file paths as the prior site to avoid any drop in google or other search engine rankings
Upvotes: 0
Views: 56
Reputation: 3906
If you think that the website would benefit from changing file path (e.g., /about-us
is always better than ?page_id=2
), you should do the change and have an http 301
moved permanently redirect from old url to new url. Google will quickly update its index if you do it this way.
Upvotes: 1
Reputation:
Changing Urls is the last thing you want to do. Only consider it if there are no alternatives.
When ranking pages, search engines also consider incoming links, what sites they come from and what text they have in them. By changing your urls you effectively make all those outside links broken.
Upvotes: 1
Reputation: 1567
Here are some guidelines for a good start: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/04/best-practices-when-moving-your-site.html
Upvotes: 1