hi my site is being re-designed. Most old pages have brand new keyword rich url's, and a title tag and meta description to compliment the url and page content when i go to google and do an "info: my url" search, only a fraction of pages are indexed, most of them old ones, and where a couple of the NEW pages are indexed, an odd thing is happening- the web pages new url is clearly given...yet the title tag and meta description remain the same as they were for the OLD page, despite obviously there being a new title tag/description..... when i click on the link, that is the new url but with the old title/desription tags, it sure enough takes me to the brand new page, and the source code confirms the new title tag and meta description text so why is it that my NEW web page url's appear, yet with OLD title/description tags but that take the visitor to the NEW page? And one other query- my site is over a year old yet google seems only to have indexed 20 pages.....there were alot more than that but even a year down the line, they don't appear ? thanks in advance
Did you 301 redirect all the old URL's to the new ones? My guess is Google has picked up on the redirect but hasn't cached the new pages. Do a cache:www.yourdomain.com/new-page.html and see if the cache is of the old page, my bet that it is.
thanks for that tip i did as you suggested with a few of the new page url's and you are absolutley right - what appears is a shot of the OLD page from when it was cached in September I don't really know anything about 301's- I've versed myself in general SEO and am halfway through optimizing my site now, but this issue of old pages only came to my attention recently. I don't implement the changes on my site, a friend who does web design is doing all that as I haven't a clue, i simply pass him the text for the page. He is just a designer so that's why he hasn't mentioned the issue himself, as i don't think even he knows. oh dear. So he should 301 all old pages then? that should do the trick ? what if he has deleted the old work as he's been going along implementing the changes? where do deleted pages go on his pc? are they retrievable ? many thanks, there is still so much to learn
If you pages were last cached in September, it indicates you don't have very good link authority. So you need to get some more links, and links to your inner pages. If you visit your old URL's, and your browser loads the new page and the address automatically changes in your browser to the new one.. Then he's done everything correctly. It's just a matter of waiting now until Google re-caches your new pages, more links will help speed up the process.
hi sorry to go on, but........ i typed in a few of the old url's into google, and no pages came up- as if they simply don't exist so for example, where my old page for Tarot readings was simply "www.mydomainname/tarot.html" and is now "www.mydomainname/tarot-readings.html"........well typing in the OLD page name brings up nothing, whereas typing in the NEW url DOES bring a page up.....but the page is does bring up is the OLD one !!!! ie the text on that page is the OLD text that is now gone, but the url for the page with this old text on it appears to be the NEW url- all a bit backwards!! so does this mean things haven;t been done correctly, and he needs to 301 all the old pages? on the links issue, you are right- that's my next project, but so far researching the seo stuff , and devising new text for dozens of web pages has taken me a good few months and i havent had time to do anything else...trying to focus on one aspect of things at a time many thanks for your time, it is a whole new issue for me so i want to be sure i understand my problem by talking directly to someone who knows the territory.
Ok if your old URL's don't load the new ones, yes he's done it wrong. There's a number of ways to do it, .htaccess is the best. A line such as the one below in your .htaccess file will 301 redirect the example page you mentioned.