When you rename a page on your website (or redesign your website, potentially changing a lot of page filenames), there may be plenty of search engines and other websites still looking for you under the old filename.

For example, Albuquerque's Mark Pardo recently upgraded their spa website. Previously, their locations where at:

http://markpardo.com/locations.htm

But now on their SpaBoom Dynamic Website, it's at:

http://www.markpardo.com/contact

Google still has the old page indexed. But you'll notice, if you click on the old link, it actually takes you to the new link (instead of getting an ugly "Page not found"). And the same thing will happen for any other websites that link to that page — you'll go directly to the new page. And Mark Pardo still gets credit for the inbound link.

Doing page redirects like this is important for your search engine placement, and it needs to be done anytime you rename or delete a page. It's super easy for SpaBoom Dynamic Websites: go to Setup, Website and then click on Redirects. Add a new redirect, entering the old filename and then selecting the current page to which to redirect.

If you're managing your own website, learn how to do redirects or make sure that your webmaster does it. An important technical note: use what's called a 301 redirect, which means the page has moved permanently, and not a 302 redirect.

When Google crawls your website again, it will see the redirect and index the new page. And, in the meantime, everyone will still be able to find you!

One Response to “Tell Google when to move on”

1. Rich Haslam Says:
   July 12th, 2006 at 10:28 am

   When you first create your site, or new page, enter the url in a google search bar.

   This will speed up the indexing of your site because the search box is now telling the spiders that there is a site/page that someone is looking for.

Leave a Reply

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website