Do you think it will be a good idea to delete old blog pages off the server

[whitbycottages]

I paid somebody to build my website using Dreamweaver, and at one point I didn't know how to use the template which automatically updates every page in the menu section so I stupidly broke the template on every new page when I made the websites blog and put the pages into a subfolder. I realised this was a silly thing to do and now and I now know how to use the template correctly I've copied every single page over from the subfolder and put it into the main template.

Now I can update the template menu and every page changes automatically. The only problem is I've now got two versions of every page of my blog on the website.

For some reason when I do a sitemap it comes up with a links to the old blog pages I, don't know why when I've removed the links from the blog page?  and also the new copies also. I have basically got a copys of all blog pages.

Do you think it will be a good idea to delete old indexed  blog pages off the server so that when Google spiders the site it will pick up only the new links to the copy pages?

[EGOL]

Question: How long ago did you do this?  Was your site established and pulling traffic when the change was done?

Question:  If you grab a unique sentence from one of those pages and search for it do you see two copies on google? or bing?

If this was my site I would  do 301 redirects of the old URLs to the new URLs and delete the old pages.

[whitbycottages]

The original blog webpages were created about six months ago and they are indexed if you search etc.

I have just today updated the blog entirely so that it is part of the Dreamweaver template by copying the content from the old pages to the new, painful boring!

So the online website blog now has links going to the new pages moved from the subfolder address.

To people that drop into the blog page now see only the new version only, which matches the rest of the website design and template. I forgot to mention the updated in design recently to list other holiday cottages that are clients and that is why I primarily wanted to change these old blog posts to match the new template which now advertises the new holiday cottages I represent as a letting agent.

If I leave the updated blog page now will Google update the URLs of the blog posts links to the new URLs of the blog posts?

Or should redirect the old original blog posts with a 301 the redirect? I've never done a 301 redirects is it difficult?

[EGOL]

In my opinion, it is very important to delete anything that might be a duplicate.

Also, if the old URLs have any external links their value can be transferred to your new page - making your site compete better almost immediately.

[whitbycottages]

I have just deleted the name of the subdirectory and kept the new blog webpages within the template of the website the same url.

It's very likely that there will be some back links coming into the old blog pages so would it be worthwhile to in the redirect 301?

or just deete the old indexed pages ..

Old
http://www.endeavourcottage.co.uk/whitby-blog/Whitby-lifeboats.html

New

http://www.endeavourcottage.co.uk/Whitby-lifeboats.html

[EGOL]

The 301 redirect will be very valuable.

You also have some canonical problems......

Both of these URLs display.

http://www.endeavourcottage.co.uk/Whitby-lifeboats.html

http://endeavourcottage.co.uk/Whitby-lifeboats.html

Do you know if your server can use .htaccess files?

[whitbycottages]

I have no idea what htaccess files are, but I guess I will have to learn.

If a  301 redirect can simply transfer the old webpage directly through to the new one that surely must be the simple answer. Along of course within the incoming link juice.

Is that the case and if so that it will be my project for tomorrow morning as it's 2 AM in the UK

[EGOL]

A good description of how to solve your www vs non-www problem can be found here.

My .htaccess code looks like this...

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

===============================================

Redirecting an old page to a new page is described here.

My .htaccess code looks like this.....

redirect 301 /old/old.htm http://www.you.com/new.htm

[whitbycottages]

The 301 redirects was quite easy to set up, but I've actually found a better solution using Dreamweaver for my problem. I replaced all the old pages where I'd broken the template in the sub folder with new versions which are attached to the template with the correct copy and paste the content and title tags. So all the pages which are indexed and now the new looking version.

The one thing I've learnt from this episode is that if you don't know how to operate a particular piece of software and you can't get the answers you require immediately, be patient until you know how to do things correctly.

It saves time in the long run..............