I'm looking for suggestions on how to implement some chages on my website which I have not updated since I created it about a year ago. Some information that may be relevant to how I do this are my rankings in the search engines. I am in the top 10 for some minor terms in MSN, and less on Yahoo, and basically non existant in google. Now that my domain and site has been up for over a year with some links, I'm hoping to quickly get out of the sandbox, if I am still in it (I haven't looked, since my main concern is rebuilding the site first). My issue is that currently I have some data pages about cars, and they are named "1986-buick-regal.html", etc., depending on the model type and year. There are no directory structures - this is just in the root of the main domain. I am switching to a new CMS, and it looks like it may be difficult and manually intensive to recreate these exact pages, and it will be easier with add on components to create directories such as /buick/regal/1986-regal.html or something similar. My questions are... 1) What is the best mod_rewrite redirect to use if I choose the directory structure (which I am leaning towards due to it's simplicity and better structure/look, plus I can get an extra keyword or 2 in there). 2) I am trashing the old forums and galleries, and will be implementing new ones. I don't think the gallery pages are really indexed by the search engines, but a few of the forums are, although not in the top 20 listings. Should I even worry about this, and just let the 404 show, or somehow redirect those pages somewhere else, like the new forums/galleries. My main concern is that I lose the few major top 10 listings I have so far, or I delay/mess up future rankings due to multiple 404 pages indexed, etc. Any other input into anything I may want to look at or are missing will be very helpful. Thanks in advance!
You can always use a 301 redirect for the pages that you are concerned about. You also could set up a modrewrite to take 1986-buick-regal.html and rewrite it to /buick/regal/1986-regal.html Check out http://corz.org/serv/tricks/htaccess2.php If you aren't worried about your PR showing on your toolbar for a few months, I personally would go with the 301 redirect. Morty
Thnaks for the tips. I don't really care about the PR - the traffic and serps are what matter to me. I will look into using the 301 redirects.
The 301 redirects are what will enable your site to sustain the SERPs and traffic. The PR is just an indication of Google's recognition of your pages...