Does this require site-wide 301 redirects?

[Grabapple]

I have an old site that we are re-building, and also moving form Yahoo Stores to Big Commerce.

1. yahoo uses site.com/page.html and BC uses site.com/page. Is there any SEO benefit to keeping the old .html format?
2. some of the pages on the old site have no links to them from external sites. Do they even need re-directs, or should I just let Google find the new page equivalents when they crawl the new version of the site?
3. While some of the old pages (primarily product pages) have OK urls, others have obscure product numbers as the URL. Obviously the latter need re-directing to a more relevant page, but what about situations like this:
   _/accessory-product.html _ > product-accessory
   In this example, the existing URL is fine, except for the .html extention. If I just used the old URL, would having a mix of /sample.html and /sample pages hurt me?

Thanks in advance for your help and input!

Dave

[Webtraders]

I think it certainly wouldnt hurt to redirect your old site.com/page.html to your new site.com/page. if there is any linkjuice directed to the old page (the .html) 90-99% of the linkjuice will be transferred to the new site.com/page with a 301 redirect.

[RobertFisher]

David

1. No, I am assuming it is not a mirror of the old without the .html and you have created better UI/UX and therefore different url structure.

2. Assuming the old pages are not bookmarked by people who are paying customers, you do not need to redirect them if there is no benefit to be derived from the exercise.

3. I think minimally you create issues for paying customers when you have a mix of urls like that. You run the risk (unless there are very few product pages) of also ending up with duplicate content, etc. Just clean it all up and lose the .html. Redirect the pages where there is value to you or your customers. On the ones you do not redirect, make sure there is a way for someone to find what they are looking for from the 404 page.

Hope this helps you out,

Robert

[Grabapple]

Thanks both of you. It's pretty much what I thought, but it is always nice to get confirmation from others. Been selling online for a long time, but SEO is my weak point for sure.

[customerparadigm.com]

David -

My $0.02 is that you should keep the older page name structure, using the .html extension.

The reason? It looks like it's not too difficult to do, and then you won't have to worry about 301 redirects.

It's been well documented that 301 redirects only share about 85% of their value:

301 Redirects transfer about 85% of the link value, according to the Moz blog article here:
http://moz.com/blog/save-your-website-with-redirects

"When done properly, we know from testing and statements from Google that a 301 redirect passes somewhere around 85% of its original link equity."

According to an interview with Google's Matt Cutts: http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/021832.html

"Eric Enge: Let’s say you move from one domain to another and you write yourself a nice little statement that basically instructs the search engine and, any user agent on how to remap from one domain to the other. In a scenario like this, is there some loss in PageRank that can take place simply because the user who originally implemented a link to the site didn't link to it on the new domain?"

_ "Matt Cutts: That's a good question, and I am not 100 percent sure about the answer. I can certainly see how there could be some loss of PageRank. I am not 100 percent sure whether the crawling and indexing team has implemented that sort of natural PageRank decay, so I will have to go and check on that specific case. (Note: in a follow on email, Matt confirmed that this is in fact the case. There is some loss of PR through a 301)."_

If you are in a competitive space, I'd highly recommend keeping the older URL structure intact.

[Grabapple]

Hi Jeff,

That was my first thought as well, then i got into the old site and saw that I was going to have to re-write most of them anyway. I am hoping to get back some of the juice with solid on page SEO and new content.