changing url patterns

so i have a site with urls having a specific pattern (i use mod_rewrite). i decided to change the url pattern to something that will improve my rankings. so, which of the options would you go with:

1) keep links to both urls patterns. the problem here is i am running the risk of hitting the duplicate content penalty.
2) remove the old links and just use the new ones. the problem here is the old urls had PR2+. the new ones will be 0 at least for a while. so until the next PR update the traffic will be significantly lower.

any advice is greatly appreciated
james

 

I got the same problem after trying out same way as you... I'm going with 2) and waiting to see when I get pr back... Incedently traffick is down, though that could be due to a lot of reasons.

 

me too. i did go ahead and made the change (option #2) and my traffic is down. (as i suspected). i wonder if i need to wait for the next PR update to get the traffic back

 

You could also just add a blank page with a manual/automatic timed refresh to the new page. This would keep you clear of the dup content issue as well as give you some traffic until those pages lose their ranks.

I did #2 as well a few months ago and lost many keywords, but with the new urls I've found they're much easier to rank well. In only one week after targeting Reality Tv especially for Msn I now rank #3 with the keywords in title, keywords, onpage and now url.

 

well, i am talking about 17,000 pages here. so i am not sure how a blank page that does the refresh help...

at this point i am almost tempted to go back to the old urls.

 

Keep the old URLS dont change them. If you had previous mod rewrite keep it, you will feel really bad when ur rankings drop.

 

I take great comfort in that line Hope to be able to report back soon with a positive story

 

I did what you are doing.

Google is like a friend who comes to visit your home regularly. One day G comes by and misses your home completely.

Google: "What's this? Where is my friend’s home? I think it is this one but it is on a different street? Different color too? Hmm? I think I will re-index entire site to see if this is my fiends home. In the mean time I will be cautious by lowering position in SERP's temporarily. If I see that this is indeed my friends house I will give it it's deserved place amongst friends."

"However, if I see he is still linking old page URL’s from his navigation or any other page on his site, I will surly penalize him for Adultery of same content.
Why, how dare he try to get twice the credit for our friendship when in reality he is two timing?

The moral of this short story is this. If you make major changes to your site, expect Google to be cautious. Make all changes at once and do not link to the old site URL’s.

Stretching out improvements will kill your site, especially if you change Title Tags. Google loves consistency and is quite comforted by familiarity. It will take 60 days for G to rekindle friendship. After that it will be clear sailing as you rise to your proper place amongst competitors.

That was my case and I hope it will be yours.


D

 

bigdoug, thanks a lot. amusing (and very helpful) post

 

Thx a million bigdoug. That really was a good story. I think I will leave my website alone for a month or two, then se how the keywords come out of it.

 

devbistro,

FWIW, my rank sucks in google, so I don't know how it would affect that, but I had 3 different link patterns. But I switched them all to the newest, the old ones are still active, but they aren't referenced any where, and I've seen a big drop. Could be coincidence... my guess is, in the end, it will all work out, links that aren't on pages any more will be dropped, and the new ones will be picked up.

Just guesses though, I'll see how it pans out, I had 17k pages indexed in msn, now down to 7k, I hope it climbs back up once msn crawls all the new link formats. =)

 

You guy's are welcome. If for some reason your site dose not re-index properly after 60 day's, you have a good option.

1) Buy one (clean) PR7 link and point it to the index page. Make sure navigation is in tip top shape, and no broken links.

That's like giving surgar to a six year old. Time for organic SERP's to fly high.

If that dosen't work, well.........Start Drinking Beer...lol

 

As long as you don't link those pages from New site your ok.

However, you dont want to delete those old pages because people have linked to them and that is free traffic. Just make sure you remove the navigation off the old pages and leave a index link to the new site at the top of the page.