Hi, I'm forced to delete my site due to a database crash and reinstall. However, it's going to be difficult to keep the same url structure. I have some strong links to some of the internal pages and would like to still benefit from them. What's the best way to redirect so that my site still benefits from the incoming links it currently has? Is there any way I can catch all links that go to pages that will no longer be there without redirecting each "old" page one-by-one, and redirect to my homepage for example? Thanks for any help.
use 301 redirection. for more detail related to your site platform please see http://www.seoworkers.com/seo-articles-tutorials/permanent-redirects.html I thins this will be useful for U.
The SEs want you to use a 301 redirect for this. But there is another way. If the pages you want to keep are non-query string, then create a dummy page with the exact url string that has PR or links. After a short period of time ~1 month, then apply an internal 301 to where you want them to go. I had to do the very same thing awhile back, I went from a .ASP to a .ASPX design. Many of the .ASP pages had good page rank and serious links. I still have the .ASP page there. I just linked them in on my HTML site map page. And I never did the 301.
I would use PHP. When you are generating your new pages dynamically, you would check if the requested page is in your database and display it else 301 redirect it.