Time sensitive: HELP! We are having a problem doing a 301 redirect.....what can we do instead?

[PatriotOutfitters81]

Our website has dynamic URLs and we are moving to another server/platform. 301 redirects is looking like a highly unlikely solution. A 3rd party company is handling the back-end of the website which they say works more like a "search engine" than a traditional website. Maybe that explains why they're having a hard time with the 301 redirects.

Worst case scenario: we can't use the 301 redirect.

What else can we do? We are considering "Indicate your canonical (preferred) URLs by including them in a Sitemap" as Google describes here: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139066#2\. I'm wondering if this method only applies to duplicate content........and what would happen once the old website results in a 404 page......

HELP! We need to cross over to the new platform as soon as possible.

[KeriMorgret]

This might be a bit of a tough one to answer without details about the site. You may want to consider asking this in private Q&A where you can give URLs and more details without the public seeing.

[PatriotOutfitters81]

Awesome - thanks! I was hesitant if I should do a private question since it's being shut down soon. But thanks for the "go" signal. I'll send it right away.

[KeriMorgret]

We're accepting private questions until next Friday, and will answer all that we get. It may take a couple to a few days for a response, since everyone is trying to get in their last private question, but it's probably the best option for your right now.

[PatriotOutfitters81]

Of course, if anyone else out there in the SEOMoz community want to chime in, I'm open to any thoughts, suggestions, and help.

[Brian-H]

Most important thing now is to get a full current live link list of your site.

Any redirects can then be made at any point in the future if they can't done straight away but you can't easily do that if you don't know what they old pages were.

Run a manual crawl of your site now and save the result for reference.

[PatriotOutfitters81]

We definitely have a comprehensive link list in hand!