To resubmit or not to resubmit after major site overhaul [Archive]

cctech

03-20-2006, 03:37 PM

We recently totally recreated a site for a client. Their previous site had been indexed by google and the "rest." My question is this: Do we resubmit the site? or do we allow the spiders to update everything? I have ran across allot of information on resubmitting. Some say you will be counted as a spammer. Others say if you do a "significant" update to a site, then it is ok to resubmit. I don't want to get sent to the sandbox or banished forever. I found several posts here about submitting, but did not see anything that specifically dealt with this. If I overlooked it, please send me a link.

thanks

incrediblehelp

03-20-2006, 07:43 PM

cc you don't submit websites to search engines anymore. The engines will see these changes themselves when they come back and visit the URLs previously indexed. The issue for you is to make sure that if the websites URL's have changed you implemented 301 redirects from the old URLs to the new ones. Has this been done? If not you better get on it!

cctech

03-21-2006, 05:40 AM

hi incredi..

the url is the same as it was. we only changed the look of the site and made the content dynamic.

did we miss anything?

thanks

incrediblehelp

03-21-2006, 11:54 AM

cc,

Like I said did the URL change? Did page names change? Can you post some examples?

cctech

03-21-2006, 12:07 PM

hi incredi...

here is the url http://advosi.com.

...all of the pages changed. originally, the site was static and only a little content. (very basic site). now, the site is dynamic and the client has concentrated on creating more content. they entire layout has changed, nothing of the original site remains (except the original address listed above). does that give you more info.? thanks for your help with this.

incrediblehelp

03-21-2006, 12:24 PM

Right so the page names did change:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=site%3Aadvosi.com%2F

You need to set up 301 redirects from the old pages to the new ones. For instance:

http://www.advosi.com/aboutus.html should 301 redirect to, http://www.advosi.com/aboutus.php

You must find all the match ups and set these up. Here are more posts on 301 redirects.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Awebproworld.com+301+redirect

cctech

03-21-2006, 02:42 PM

It appears that, from the things I have read, the main purpose of a 301 redirect is to "help" SEs find the new versions of the pages. Thereby, you preserve the previous good rankings. Is that correct?

If that is correct, then by extension, if the original site had NO good rankings at all (or maybe just a few), would one need to go through the trouble of performing a 301 redirect?

The 301 redirect seems daunting and could create more problems if not done correctly.

johnca

03-21-2006, 05:08 PM

Hello cc,

If you decide not to do the 301 re-directs - imho it does seem to save a lot of hassle if your prior PR was zilch, and want the "safe" feeling of submission, why not do a google sitemap.xml?

If you already had one before, just upload the new on, with the new addresses, and delete the old.

Even simpler if you didn't have one before - you'll be new in the program.

incrediblehelp

03-21-2006, 05:10 PM

If you decide not to do the 301 re-directs - imho it does seem to save a lot of hassle if your prior PR was zilch, and want the "safe" feeling of submission, why not do a google sitemap.xml?

What about MSN and Yahoo?

incrediblehelp

03-21-2006, 05:11 PM

incrediblehelp

03-21-2006, 05:13 PM

It appears that, from the things I have read, the main purpose of a 301 redirect is to "help" SEs find the new versions of the pages. Thereby, you preserve the previous good rankings. Is that correct?

Yes, but even if your website didnt have very strong rankings these pages still aquired history from being in the index which is a factor in overall rankings in the SE's.

JKomp

03-21-2006, 05:30 PM

In short, no need to resubmit but if you did you certainly wouldn't be classed as a spammer.
From Google: "You can submit your site as often as you like, but multiple submissions will not improve the likelihood of your site being added or accelerate the process. We do not penalise sites for "over-submitting." If you choose to submit your site, only the top-level domain is necessary, as the spiders can follow your internal links to the rest of the pages."

Submission is a waste of time, won't help and won't harm, but your time is better spent on something else.

Also, not doing the redirects won't harm you either but they are certainly a good idea if you don't want to be competing with your old site in the rankings. They will also ensure visitors from search engines delivered to your old site are redirected to the new site.
If the old site only got minimal traffic then I would simply delete the old files.

Keimos

03-21-2006, 06:02 PM

I have to agree with JKomp,

301 re-directs are unnecessary, more work than than is required especially if you have a very large site.

Google, MSN and Yahoo all spider from the Index page, so it is important that you have the matatag follow "all" and make sure that your site has the structure in place to make sure that key parts of your site are linked.

On submitting to Google, I do so only when I have made major changes and that is only as a precaution.

One thing I would say is to make sure that you have an error404 in place so that if any of your old pages are well placed at least you can re-direct visitors to your home page and if indexed the bots will follow the re-direct back to home base and then start to crawl again.

Keimos

incrediblehelp

03-21-2006, 06:10 PM

I have to agree with JKomp,

301 re-directs are unnecessary, more work than than is required especially if you have a very large site.

Sure if you dont mind waiting 4 months to get the same rankings you had before.

Google, MSN and Yahoo all spider from the Index page, so it is important that you have the matatag follow "all"....

No.

and make sure that your site has the structure in place to make sure that key parts of your site are linked..

Yes.

On submitting to Google, I do so only when I have made major changes and that is only as a precaution.

When you say submit I assume you mean Google Sitemap? You dont really need sitemaps unless you website is having issues getting crawled.

One thing I would say is to make sure that you have an error404 in place so that if any of your old pages are well placed at least you can re-direct visitors to your home page and if indexed the bots will follow the re-direct back to home base and then start to crawl again.

Yes a 404 file is a good idea, but what makes you think the spider crawls further when they find a 404 response in the header.

cctech

03-21-2006, 06:26 PM

What is the determining factor in whether you do a 301 redirect or not? I am assuming, after reading these posts, that there are times when one would want to take the time do do one AND YET there would be times when one might reason that it was not worth the time. Thoughts?

Also, if one did a 301 on a site that previously had very little traffic and a PR of 0, is it best to have everything point to the www URL? or does it matter one way or the other, as long as everything points to the same spot (IBLs, for example)?

Thanks to all for taking their time with this.

SummitPK

03-21-2006, 07:39 PM

I updated my site 2 years ago. It was a xomplete overhall to CSS and improved SEO, page title, alt tags, meta tag changes, and I added ecommerce.

I did not notify or resubmit to any search engines.

My site links, page rank, traffic and search engine placement (of #1-2) did not skip a beat. In fact all either stayed the course or improved. And my stats package showed an uninteruppeted search engines spidering of the site during and after the transition.

www.SummitPK.com

TheGarty

03-21-2006, 07:54 PM

301 re-directs are unnecessary, more work than than is required especially if you have a very large site.

This is incorrect.

If you already have pages indexed in google, and you dont do a 301 re-direct, all your pages will dissappear from the index and you are right back to basics.

You dont have to do all... if your scared of a littel hard work, just make sure your main pages that drive traffic from google are done.

SEO is about persistence, and if you have had a site for 4 months, with indexed pages, why would you just throw that all away.

History is very important to google in factoring in PR, you rarley find any sites that are under 4 months old with any PR at all.

If you dont spend a little time doing 301 re-directs, your just being slack... and your site will pay the penalty.

JKomp

03-22-2006, 03:55 AM

I think what I said was slightly misinterpreted by Keimos. I said that if you have no significant rankings in the search engines then it might not be worth the hassle of setting up the redirects - this is what I meant when I said 'minimal traffic'.
If in any doubt set up the redirects.

dburdon

03-22-2006, 12:55 PM

Can we forget about submitting. I have a distinct feeling of deja vu reading the replies.

incrediblehelp

03-22-2006, 02:07 PM

I updated my site 2 years ago. It was a xomplete overhall to CSS and improved SEO, page title, alt tags, meta tag changes, and I added ecommerce.

OK, but did you change page names, directory names, URL architecture in anyway? That is what is being discussed as a change that would require a 301 redirect.

If cctech had website live, for 1 year with this page: www.domain.com/aboutus.html and then switched it to www.domain.com/aboutus.php you better believe a 301 redirect is needed.

cctech

03-22-2006, 02:12 PM

incrediblehelp

03-22-2006, 02:27 PM

cctech have done ANY reading on 301 redirects other than asking questions here in this thread?

Your questions should be answered by yourself. Especially the on time. It is up to you if you want to do one or not.

The next question on redirecting the old URL to the www or non-www is also up to you. You have to decide these items not us. Most of websites I have seen consider the www domain as the primary.

cctech

03-22-2006, 05:15 PM

I was using this forum as well as other sources on the Net. I have done ALLOT of reading on 301s in the past few days. And I have found out that there are many different opinions on when to do them and when it does not matter, etc. Many of these differing opinions show up in some of the posts in this thread.
I was not asking for you or anyone else to make the decision for me. I was just trying to be as certain as possible before I went and took a step which I previously knew little about and that could potentially cause havoc with a web site.

Thanks for your time so far...don't spend anymore of it on this.

holmpage

03-22-2006, 07:42 PM

One more reason to use redirects and custom 404 pages: the human being who may have bookmarked a page that has now disappeared, or who has followed an old inbound link to your site (perhaps from a search engine). That's exactly who you want to keep on your site. I know this is a search engine forum, but let's not forget it's all about people in the end!

incrediblehelp

03-22-2006, 10:59 PM

cctech sorry to sound a little stand offish earlier. Some of your questions just started to loop a little bit. Ask us exactly what you want redirected (with an exmaple, from where to where) and I am sure we can post the code.