Hello, I am renovating one of my sites and Im going to have to change the name of the page which has over 100 links and where much of my traffic is generated. What can I do? For example, cars.com/automobiles.html But I need to change that to cars.com/anythingonwheels
Sure, you can, with a 301 redirect using php - that way, your link juice passes over to your new page. of course new-url.com would become your new link.
Use a 301 redirect, here is the most useful article on how to do this properly. http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/2007/03/how-to-properly-implement-a-301-redirect/
Why you want to change the page name? If you are going to redesign then no need to change the name. If you are changing your hosting server and changing domain name then it's fine. You can redirect your all back links. Don't worry about the work you have done don't waste.
The reason I need to change a specific page, is because before my website was a crappy template site which I didnt have much control over (including the URL of the page).
301 redirect method explained above is the safest method so that you don't lose any of the link value. Just need to set it up correctly.
Sure you can redirect your visitor to your new page from the old page. There have no problem. Watch this video tutorial about 301 redirect your old URLs (web pages) when redesigning websites . Hope it will help you.
I recomended this. .,with 301 moved permanently. your traffic from old page will redirected to your new page . good luck. .
If you Redirect your site through 301 Redirection you will get all SEO benefits http://www.seo-consultant-services.co.uk/301-redirects-www-non-www-canonical-problems.html
And I did a 301 redirect and have lost the majority of my traffic for about 3 weeks now, starting from about 3 days after the redirect. So I don't believe any of it. Its starting to come back but I'm barely at 1/3 of where I was teh day of the redirect.
@RumpledElf whether or not the page has been redireted with a 301 won't affect it's traffic, though it's conceiveable that during a very brief transition window in SE databases (replacement of old link with new) that there might be some hit. Is it possible that external factors have influenced the drop in measured traffic (or that you're not measuring the right page)?
as all other member says the same i really stick to the url redirect but if you only want to change the url then you should take in mind that the seo friendly urls are more catchy. instead of automobiles you could put automobile-countryname-price(if possible). try it...
I have two sites - one had about 300 pages that I haven't updated since 2007 and is full of uncorrected errors. I forked off a copy and made a *much* better version in 2009 with lots more features, 3000 pages (and growing) but left the old version up as it looks completely different. Then along comes Panda and decides that because 300 pages overlap and the old site is so old, that apparently my old site needs to rank at #1 and have 15k visitors a day. So the visitors complained, and I bit the bullet and redirected the crap old site to the good new one. Cue huge traffic crash and my CPC dropped from 20c to 3c. Its been YEARS since my adsense has been below $2 a day Both sites are PR 4 now (last PR update the new one went up and the old one didn't), both have DMOZ entries, same niche, same audience, new one is rapidly picking up backlinks while the old one doesn't anymore, but Google thinks the old site is some kind of uber authority site and my new one is the lowest of the low spam sites, apparently. Hopefully Google eventually gets its head out of its proverbial a**, realises what is going on and combines the link juice of the two now one redirects to the other. I was NOT expecting the old site to be deranked from #1 to #100 3 days after I put the redirect in place. Everything I read says permanent redirects aren't meant to do that. Edit: attached webmaster tools since the day of the redirect, just to show how ouch the drop was.
@RumpledElf I see what you mean, and understand how you may well have felt (more than just a little) rumpled by that I'd be interested to hear others' experiences, particularly under a schema that's a little more traditional (you didn't redirect for 2 years, if I understand correctly). It seems logical to assume that Google didn't "like" the site it saw as a "copy", and that the redirect from a "trusted" original source to what for two years had been seen as a younger upstart (copy) lead to the copy retaining its standing, rather than the 301 replacing the authority/position of the 2nd site with that of the first. (poorly expressed, sorry, but you get what I mean, right?) 301s (and by extension search engine's hanling of them) are designed with new sites in mind, perhaps they aren't willing or able to factor in a scenario like yours?