To resubmit or not to resubmit after major site overhaul

[incrediblehelp]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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

[incrediblehelp]

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.