Changing Page Names & Site Organization

[markvredeveld]

I would like to change some page names and how I organize those pages on a website, and I am wondering what effect that will have on my Google rankings. Specifically I am wondering:

1. Some of these pages have decent rankings in other search engines. Can I leave the old pages on the website until the new page url is indexed, or will that cause problems because it will be a duplicate page?

2.How much does what you name a page effect ranking of that page?

3.What effect on ranking does the organization of files on a site have? e.g. the number of folders? What you name those folders?

[Mel]

Originally Posted by markvredeveld

I would like to change some page names and how I organize those pages on a website, and I am wondering what effect that will have on my Google rankings. Specifically I am wondering:

1. Some of these pages have decent rankings in other search engines. Can I leave the old pages on the website until the new page url is indexed, or will that cause problems because it will be a duplicate page?

2.How much does what you name a page effect ranking of that page?

3.What effect on ranking does the organization of files on a site have? e.g. the number of folders? What you name those folders?

You can leave the old pages on the site with a 302 (moved permanently)redirect to the new pages.

Using keywords in your directories and page names will get you a bit more ranking but there are many more important things to do.

IMO Site organization has little effect on rankings so long as you have it organized so that all files are one or two clicks away from the home page. If your site organization does not allow that then its a good idea to use a sitemap to allow spiders to find your pages.

[markvredeveld]

How do I set up a 302 redirect?

[Mel]

Sorry that is a typo it should be a 301 permanent redirect. Your ISP should be able to help you set this up, but if not there are many ways to do this using PHP etc.
Do a google search for 301 redirect tutorial and you will find several good explainations.

[rlrouse]

I never rename pages or delete obsolete pages. It's easy to just change the page's content and/or add a new page reflecting the desired page name, structure, and content.

Creating an entirely new page lets you keep the traffic to the old page and gain new traffic to the new one. Renaming a page means you'll lose the benefits provided by the existing inbound links.

[jaca]

This is an interesting topic as I just recently read that having keywords in page names would help your position in the search engines, so I was about to do some name changes.

Mel from what you are saying this is not the case. Is that correct?

Thanks!

[Mel]

Actually what I said Jan is that it may help a little bit, but IMO there are other more important things to take care of first.

[jaca]

Hi Mel,

I'm not sure if you checked my site out but it has gone up to a PR5 now and it listing well in the search engines for keywords. I was thinking that changing page names may be an extra boost.

Thanks for clarifying, and I totally understand what you mean.

[jmdb71]

I changed my page names, and the wait was a little long for the new pages to be picked up. However, after about 2-3 weeks or so, it was really worth if for me. I'd advise changing the names as long as you don't just delete the old pages. Have them redirect to the new pages until everything appears to be re-indexed in the major search engines. This is extremely important. Like you said, it will eventually give you the extra boost and you might as well do it now.

[jhansen]

I created several very similar - but NOT identical - pages, each optimized for specific search terms that were all closely related, and then linked them to my home page. Soon I overtook my main competitor for almost every single search term, almost 100 in all. (Sometimes he briefly overtakes me slightly for one or the other search term. As google alternates listing formulas, I generally return. If not, I analyse the competitors page and try to out-optimize him for that search term. UNLESS I see from overturm that the search term has extremely low search volume; then I allow the competitor one small success, because I'm afraid I might otherwise scare him into intensified effort that might just work to my detriment.)

I've also created several similar web-sites, each optimized for a specify product category. The human eye immediately recognizes the similarity, but not the spider, because I change enough words so that even after a year google doesn't seem to have noticed or penalized me. The result is several sites I control among the top ten for some search terms. (Once I had all top ten listings for one search term, but usually "only" eight.) Of course, these are unusual products/search terms so I'm generally competing with sites ranked no higher than 6, usually only 4 or 5.

There's some debate over importance of site rank. I've often beaten higher ranked sites IF their content was much weaker than mine for that search term. However, IF the content is comparable, then I seldom if ever beat a higher ranked site. Hence I'm now concentrating on site rank via more quality incoming links. However, when I look at higher ranked competitor sites' backlinks - either on google toolabr or on Alexa - I notice that the vast majority come from sites without much content similarity!