Redirect from old web page to new web page

[Lori99]

I am having difficulties understanding the proper way to redirect old web pages from a site to the newly redesigned site. Should each and every page be kept on the server with html code that pushes the visitor to the newly created web site? This was the impression that I was under, a co-worker of mine stated

in order to redirect every page from the old site, you will need to keep both the new and the old sites pages up and by neccessity mixed together. Pretty much a nightmare for people doing maintenance or futher development in the future. A better solution might be a custom 404 error page or a redirect at the webserver level of 404 errors to the new homepage.

Will using a 404 error be effective with search engines? Will they be able to find the new site? How do you handle the redirect?

[brian.mark]

The most effective way is to do a 301 permanent redirect from the old page to the new page. This passes along (eventually) all incoming links, etc. and lets the engines know where the page is without much delay (depending on how many different 301's you do at a time).

The 404 will get the old page removed, so you'll have to rebuild the link popularity and have it spider from the homepage. This takes much longer.

Brian.