Someone recently asked me about redirecting their old web pages (their old URLs) to the new URLs because they redesigned their website. Here is what they said:

We recently redesigned our website and pushed it live. However, we have redesigned our website and we forgot to catalogue all of the old URLs on the old website, and therefore we have no way of knowing what the old URLs were on the site, so we can redirect them to the new URLs. Help!

Whenever you redesign your website, it’s important to set up 301 Permanent Redirects from the old URLs to the new URLs so that website visitors and the search engine bots know that the page has moved its location to a new URL. If you use a 301 Permanent Redirect (and not a meta refresh and not a 302 redirect), all of the Google PageRank, or “link juice” is “supposed to be” passed on to the new URL.

But what if you redesign your website and don’t make a list of all of your old pages? Well, there are two ways to deal with this. I actually prefer doing both, so that you make sure that you catch all of the old pages on your site.

Review Log Files for 404 Errors
First, review your website’s log files and get a list of all of the 404 errors on your site. Since the search engines crawl websites a lot, there is a good chance that most of your old web pages will result in a 404 error, and that will be on the list. You’ll also be able to see which pages have the most 404 errors, and you can pay attention to those first.

You may be able to see the 404 errors using web analytics. Depending on which web analytics tools you use, you will be able to see the site’s 404 errors. Make sure you use a web analytics tool that analyzes your site’s log files, NOT something like Google Analytics, which does NOT rely on your site’s log files. If you are using cPanel or another web host that has a control panel, you may have a program called AWStates, or Webalizer, that will do the trick. You may want to download and use Analog, which I’ve been using for over 10 years to analyze a site’s log files.

Review Webmaster Tools
After a few days of the with the site’s new design, you should start to accumulate 404 errors on your site. You can review those errors in Google Webmaster Tools. Since you’re relying on Google’s crawl to identify 404 errors, that may not be as reliable as looking at your log files. But, if you do not have access to the site’s log files, that’s the next best thing. You can also get the data in Bing’s Webmaster Tools, as well.

Other Considerations
Whenever you redesign your website, keep in mind that it’s always preferable to keep the same exact URLs that you have had in the past. Ideally, your site’s URL structure should use directories rather than actual file names for the URLs. For example:

https://www.billhartzer.com/about/
is preferred over using this:
https://www.billhartzer.com/about.html

Using directories such as /about/ is preferred because is is platform-agnostic. It is not tied to any particular type of web server (Windows versus Unix with page.html versus page.asp), and your site structure can remain in place no matter what type of Content Management System you use. You’re essentially “future proofing” your website, as we always will have directories. Even if you decide to use PHP or even ASP.Net as your back-end content management system and code, you can still keep the same exact URLs.

If you have a question for me that you would like me to answer, feel free to contact me and I’ll either answer it personally or post it here on my blog. And you can even remain anonymous, if you like.

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Links are very important when it comes to search engine optimization. Anchor text for your internal links aren’t the only ones for you to consider. The text that surrounds your links is just as important. You many have a link that is located in the footer or the side bar on another website too, and the text that is around those links is very important to consider as well.

In the case above, note that “search engine” is near the actual link to Google.com

Links will be given more weight by the search engines, especially Google, when they are surrounded by optimized text. This is compared to the same links that are merely flowing but not with any strategical element in place with them. It is well worth it to visit all of your links out there to your sit and to change the text surrounding them if you don’t already have them optimized.

This is one of the simple, effective, but often overlooked parts of search engine optimization that you can use to improve your rankings. You should have links with the content of your site too such as in the paragraphs. Don’t save them all for the footers or the sidebars. You will find plenty of chances to put in internal links within that content. If you are talking about a corporate website or a press release, then those are perfect opportunities.

There are many opportunities with e-commerce too. For example, you can add a short paragraph after each product description. In it, you can talk about other products that are similar and that would compliment that particular product. This is going to be far more effective for you than just a list of other similar products you offer that would compliment a particular item someone is looking at.

When you take the time to surround text with links to your web pages, you will find that you are getting more traffic to all your pages. You will find that your links liven things up and you may just find your conversion rates exploding. This type of effort can pay off for your ranking in the search engines very well.

Content is very important if you want your website to be attractive to users and you want to rank high in the search engines, like Google. However, the volume of content that you have isn’t nearly as important as the overall quality of it. This is where many people make a mistake as they fail to optimize what they put on their web pages, so the miss the ideal opportunity to improve SEO efforts. [Read more…]

It is that time of year, the end of the year where we see all sorts of top 10 lists. I have my own lists, like the one that I like to post from Fineman PR about the top 10 Public Relations Blunders of the year. This year, though, I thought that I would come up with a new list, the Top 10 Search Engine Optimization Blunders of 2011. This year was especially good for search engine optimization mistakes and blunders–and I had to narrow down the list quite a bit. [Read more…]