Know-How Exchange : SEO/SEM

Hi Steve,

To answer #2, you'll need to implement 301 (permanent) redirects. This will ensure that Google identifies that /6-0-1.htm as being replaced by /brand_positioning (I would use a dash rather than an underscore, by the way).

Also, any external links or bookmarks pointing to the old page won't be "lost." This will help your SEO efforts and your overall usability (so those who bookmarked or referred to the page in the past won't land on a 404 error page when visiting).

Hi there,

Although this isn't what you are doing...the filter would still apply to your situation since it would be "duplicate content".

https://www.seobook.com/archives/001230.shtml

(By the way...I'm not affiliated with the above blog...just thought it might be useful.)

I'm a marketer, not a coder so I can't speak to the coding language but renaming your pages to reflect content is AWESOME. It will help you in many ways.


kris

Steve,

I have been creating Joomla based sites lately. Joomla is a Contnent Management System open source project. You can learn more about it at www.joomla.org. The database driven sites are great to allowing non-technical people the ability to chnge and add content. There are many templates that can be purchased and modified to create the site you desire. I have used several templates from www.rockettheme.com. They are pretty easy to modify using Dreamweaver and Fireworks.

Joomla is a giant project that has many developers. Because of this there are all kinds of extenstions (calendars, e-commerce, audio/video, etc). Joomla is a php and mysql driven site.

Check it out. I in general will not do sites any more that are not based on some CMS as it creates many more options.

Joomla has an SEF funtion that creates Seach Engine Friendly URLS. It also allows you to hand enter meta descriptions and key words. I have found that search engines in general crawl the sites quite well. In general google crawls the new pages pretty quickly. You definitely do not want to change your domain name. You can also use a 301 redirect to redirect any often linked old pages to the new ones.

If you change your file structure you should notify people that link to your site and ask them to correct to the new address. This will help you keep your page rank.

Hope this helps.

Mike

Steve, it looks like your site in running on a LAMP server so you could create permanent (301) redirects through the .htaccess file.

Google shows that you have 179 pages indexed. This would require a 179 redirect lines in your .htaccess file unless there was a pattern in your current URL scheme which would enable you to create rewrite rules.

Another option (among many) would be to do an HTML or PHP redirect at the page level. Take a look here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL_redirection

This is more work but requires fewer resources and general page load is faster. Admittedly, minor though - just thought you should be informed so you can make an informed decision.

The recommendation of a CMS is a good one. Especially if you wish to incorporate a blog into the new site or you will be adding a lot more content. Joomla is great but I am a big fan of both MODx and Drupal. MODx is powerful (though weak as a blog) but easy to theme. Drupal (like Joomla) is more difficult to theme. Drupal also has more plugins (modules) than MODx and has much of the key functionality of Wordpress so it's a great option. If the objectives of the site match the capabilities of MODx I highly recommend considering it.

The downside of CMSs is that they are much more complicated (read $) to implement if you are using a custom theme and they require resources to configure. The ROI is the ease of use (post installation), lower operating costs, and the increased market reach with built-in or add-on features like RSS feeds, automated site maps, user comments, and much, much more.

The choice of "file_name" or "file-name" is slowly becoming moot but standard practice has been to utilize the dash because it is easily understood by Google (among other SEs) as a word spacer.

Additionally, if you are planning on renaming your URI it may make sense to drop the file extension. This enables you to change technologies (PHP, HTML, etc) without requiring continual file name changes and redirections. I'm not certain if Dreamweaver will accommodate this but the CMSs certainly should.

Here is a great article on the subject by the W3C:
https://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI

I hope this helps.