301 Redirect Attribute-Based Dynamic URL to Renamed Attributes

[OfficeFurn]

I work with a number of ecommerce sites that have dynamically-created urls based off of product attributes we've assigned in our cms. I am updating a handful of these attributes to more seo-friendly terms because they are outdated but am not certain how to go about redirecting all the urls that each attribute is in/could be in.

For example: If I had the attributes hoagie and beanie and changed them to sandwich and headwear, a dynamic url might change like this:

• .com/hoagie/french-bread ---> .com/sandwich/french-bread
• .com/beanie/hoagie/novelty ----> .com/headwear/sandwich/novelty

Since the urls are dynamically created, I am not sure how I go about redirecting all of them, or if I need to redirect all of them at all (instead just redirecting the urls indexed by Google, etc.)

I also have a number of links within copy on each of the sites that contain linked anchor text using attributes that will be changing. I am assuming I will need to 301 each of these or update them manually to reflect the new attributes.

I am new to the seo field and would appreciate any and all advice or direction to guides and tutorials that could aid me with this project.  Thanks!

[MichaelC-15022]

Update all internal links to point to the new URLs.  301 redirects don't pass 100% of the link juice.

The best option is to create a 301 redirect rule(s) that handle all possible situations.  If that's not practical, then just worry about the ones that are linked to by external websites.  You can spot these by making the transition to the new URLs, then watching for 404 errors in Webmaster Tools, and looking for pages linked to by external sites.

If you're using IIS, you can actually do some pretty complex logic in your 404 handler and make it return a 301 in certain cases.  Check this post I did a while back.