I need to rediesign some of my websites which means changing page names, directory names ect But i am scared of my organic traffic seeing a 404 error I know i could use 301 redirects but i dont want to get stung for duplicate content, msn dropped one of my sites as soon as i setup 301 redirects Help!!
When you set up your 301 redirects - had you already deleted all of the old files from the server ?? If you had done, then I can't see a problem for you regarding duplicate content, since the original form of the content would no longer exist. As for MSM dropping your site - what percentage of traffic did you get from them ?? My guess is loess than 5%.
A site redesign can always be a big boost to your rankings. Try to design the new pages with good SEO from the ground up, with well wriiten title tag, meta description, prper use oh headline tags, and move your content up as close to the top of the page source code as possible. As others have stated, 301 redirects are the proper way to do it. I use htaccess to write my redirects and Google updates accordingly.
If you do not include any kind of duplicated content, URL or "spamming" keywords and phrases you should be fine. Your pages have become searchable because of the quality content. They should stay like this. Of course you will change the way search engines see then if you make complete change in Meta tags.
If you have deleted the old files from the server, then there would be no question of duplicate content.