Launching a New Site - Page Naming and Google Page Rank

One of our companies is about to launch a new site. here is my question. We are launching a site and want to know whether we should consider changing our page names from the old names which arent as descriptive as they could be but DO have a google pagerank associated with them OR keep the less descriptive page names so taht the google pagerank shows still.

We are listed under many terms and my fear is losing those rankings. Does anyone have any experience with this situation?

Id appreciate anyones help!

 

You should never change your page names. If they have pr on them then keep it that way. I know some would say that you could do a redirect I do not recommend this. If you add new page names then you will be starting your ranking process all over again.

Is this just a new site design?

 

I agree, definitely don't change the file names.

 

Yes this is a new website for the company.

It has many new pages in the site but much of the same contents. The problem that I saw was that as an example:

Current page name "cruise.php"
Better page name for SEO "boat_cruises_toronto.php"

In this case -- the cruise.php page has a PR of 5.

Does anyone have experience with this at all? I am only concerned about my positioning and improving that. I DONT care about ADSENSE as Im not running that.

Input appreciated and thanks so far!

 

As I said earlier. No need to change the file name. You could rank just as well with cruises.php as long you optimize the page correctly. One thing you could do though is change the name of the links to each page. For example:

If your link to cruises.php once said "Cruises" then change it to "Boat Cruises Toronto" that is the way you should name your links anyway. Always use the exact keywords when it comes to links.

Also make sure that you use the same keyword in the title, description and h1 as well, plus alt tags. As long as you do that then the name of the file does not really matter.

 

Banless is correct.

Yes. Ideally, you would have named the page as you now wish to change it. BUT he is simply trying to point out that now that you are carrying PR5, it is not worth it to risk for the SLIGHT gain of an extra keyword in the page name.

That's why you just live with it.

Best;

Eric

 

Change the names and 301 redirect the old pages to the new ones. Don't use underscores in the new pages.