Changing links after 301 already in place: is it nessasary?

[romanbond]

Hi:
I'm in the process of making sure I have a single URL that gets all link juice for every page. As the first step, I'm implementing 301 redirects. My question is:

After 301 redirect is in place will it still be necessary to update links on my site(s) that point to the old URLs.

For example, I just 301-redirected mysite.com/folder/index.html to mysite.com/folder/ - and it works fine, but I still have many links on the same site and other sites that link to mysite.com/folder/index.html. Is it important to change those links to mysite.com/folder/ as well or could I just leave them as they are since the 301 is taking care of the redirect anyway..

I mean, I will probably change them in time, just to keep things tidy. But if it's important I would definitely do it sooner rather than later.

Thank you in advance.

[ollan]

Yes, it is important to update your old links. Check out this post:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/15-tips-to-speed-up-your-website

and read the part that says "1. Minimize redirects"

[ThompsonPaul]

In addition to the speed issue, 301-redirects function just like a regular link - that is to say they lose a little bit of "link juice" in the transfer. So definitely fix the incorrect links to point directly to the correct URL. No sense wasting any "juice" unnecessarily.

My $0.02

Paul