Changing Link Title Tags & Backlinks

[BeautyStop]

On 4/19/12 I began changing the link title tags in an effort to further optimize my website. I thought they were excessively long and it would be beneficial to make them more concise. On 4/26/12 my website traffic began to fall drastically and I'm not sure if it is from google's penguin update or from changing the link title tags.

I started looking into the sudden drop of traffic and realized that when I run the site explorer tool on all of the pages I changed, the URL is redirecting. It appears that the backlinks are not passing through to the new URL.

Before I Changed the Link Title Tag:

http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.beautystoponline.com%2FAndis-Professional-Hair-Clippers-s%2F102150.htm

**After I Changed the Link Title Tag: **

http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.beautystoponline.com%2FAndis-Clippers-s%2F102150.htm

So my questions are:

1. The above example shows that the old title tag (www.beautystoponline.com/Andis-Professional-Hair-Clippers-s/102150.htm) has 43 backlinks and the new one (www.beautystoponline.com/Andis-Professiona-Hair-Clippers-s/102150.htm) has 0. Will the links eventually be attributed to the new URL.
2. I understand that the user will still be directed to my website they click the any of the backlinks, but will the link juice pointing the old URL pass through the new one?
3. Would it be better, in the long run, to continue optimizing the link title tags.

[anthonytjm]

Have you updated all internal links from old to new shortened title page? Double check that first then resubmit sitemap to see if you can get re-indexed faster.

[BeautyStop]

Thanks for that, I definitely will make sure to address the internal links. But what about questions 1, 2, and 3. At this point, my main concern are the backlinks that I have accumulated over the past 2 years. Will these apply to the new URL's?

[anthonytjm]

1. Yes, the link juice will eventually be applied to the new page. This is part of the benefit behind 301 redirect.It sometimes just takes a little time for it to process and show up in reports.

2. The link juice or link equity will eventually pass through to new url once Google has established and indexed the new page. This could take weeks to months.

3. I would continue to optimized on a regular basis. Make sure that after each 301 redirect you also adjust all internal linking to the new page, especially in your sitemaps! Other wise it could get confusing for both visitors and bots.

Hope this helps.