Creating new website with possible Url change (301 involved?)

[Socialdude]

Hi,

I am currently getting a web designer to upgrade my website.

I have built lost of links to my internal pages, should I get him to 301 redirect

example.com/about.html (old) to example.com/about (new)

OR

Is there any need for this once the page doesn't change to example.com/about-us?

Thank you in advance

[CaseyKluver]

The answer is yes, you always need to properly 301 redirect the old URL's to the new URL's when changing making such a change. This will not only tell Google that the page has moved and pass on any link juice, but it will also prevent users from seeing old pages incase anyone has bookmarked your content.

Dont forget to update your sitemap also

[RobMay]

I'm assuming you are moving from an old static HTML site to something along the lines of a CMS with Drupal or Joomla based on your new URL structure example above.

Absolutely. If you don't 301 the old page URL's to the new locations and URL names - you will eventually lose all the back-link development you have been working on. Those old URL's will eventually return a 404 error in Google WebMaster Tools, and the link value and 'juice' will be lost..

Plan out an Excel spreadsheet and then work to map all the pages from your site to their counterpart NEW URL names. This way you will make sure to get all your pages mapped out.

You would probably also want to crawl your old domain (before the new site goes live) with a tool like 'Screaming Frog' or 'Xenu' which you can download online and is free (best part and great tools to have). This will help you find and extract all the pages in your site into Excel - ensuring you don't miss any in the mapping process.

I would schedule some time after launch, to double check each URL individually (with the old URL's from the Excel DOC from the crawl) when the site goes live, to verify that the proper page level 301's is in place and correctly working.

Hope this helps you out. You should be in good shape, if you follow these steps pre and post launch.

Rob

[RobMay]

I agree, run a new XML sitemap, get it installed into GWMT (Google WebMaster Tools), and verifying you aren't seeing any issue with regards to the site, crawl errors, increased 404's will also help your efforts! Cheers.