Don’t Lose Traffic
Today I saw that a client had changed the name of a few of his files. I know that these files had a high page rank and got a lot of traffic. When he updated the site he changed the names in a efforts to make them easier to find when updating them. He did not know that all the links to the files had been indexed to microwire.html and he renamed them to comp_micro_wire.html… so what happens? He looses most of the inbound traffic and links are DOA.
How do you fix it? You used a 301 redirect to tell the search engines and anyones links that there is a NEW page for that file. (search for 301 redirect - tons of info on how to set up the simple text file) 301 redirects are a must if you redesign the site and change a bunch of names.
A cool way to watch for these opportunities are to read your error file each week and see what pages are being requested but are failing to be found by apache (the web server)…
Hope that helps keep your traffic up!
Ian