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A
four step approach to maintaining search engine rankings.
By
Tim Grant, lunavista communications corp
Is your company re-branding or re-designing a web site? If not done properly, it can negatively impact your search engine rankings and reputation.
As the World Wide Web matures, we are now seeing clients with 3rd, 4th, even 5th generation web sites.
You would hope that any site change would enhance your rankings with the search engines, but the reality is, as you seek to revise your web presence, you face the danger of alienating search engines by changing domains, page names or even programming languages.
The name game: changing domain names and search engine rankings
Companies change domain names for a variety of good reasons. Sometimes an organization may change its name changes or re-brand a product. Other times a company is looking to work with a simpler domain. Still, you need to be careful when changing domain names.
The problem is that search engines index your website and the individual pages within the site based on the domain and individual page names. As with most indices, the URL must be exact or the search engine will not recognize it. The page name www.xyz.com/about.html is not the same as www.xyz.com/about-us.html If you change even one character in the URL, regardless of whether the page or the site remains the same, you risk having to start over again in building rankings.
That can have severe consequences. One issue is that links coming into your site from other websites will no longer work, and so the rankings you've built from having a large number of links will no longer apply. Another is that the age of a domain name, in and of itself, can help in achieving high search engine rankings. If you simply change the site or the page’s name, you are introducing a completely new resource to the search engines. Not only do you risk losing the reputation you have built with the search engines, but the “newer “ page may suffer the growing pains associated with new resources and can take months to re-gain high search engine rankings.
The same consequences may be felt when changing a site’s programming language. For example, www.xyz.com/about.html is not the same as
www.xyz.com/about.asp
We have seen several instances where a client has had the foresight to maintain the page names, but did not realize that the extension is part of that name.
Changing for the better – four tips for maintaining search reputation
Fortunately, there are some ways to circumvent many of the issues related to changing a domain name or page name. Though it is likely that some loss of ranking may occur, the goal is to minimize the time it takes to push the new page names or domain back to the top of the search engine rankings.
1. 301 Re-Directs
There is an industry-accepted solution to notify search engines when a domain or page name has permanently moved. This is called a 301 re-direct (permanent redirection). It is the only form of redirection accepted for the instances discussed above.
If you are changing just the domain name, but maintaining page names and subsequent URL structure, it may be sufficient to redirect only the primary domain (as opposed to every single page). Some popular large scale web hosts allow only this method.
If you are changing the page names, or the URL structure, the preferred method is to create a permanent re-direction for each individual page.
If you change a domain name or page name, you need to employ a 301 re-direct at the old page name telling the search engines that the existing resource has permanently moved to the new name, thereby assuring the search engines that the page is not necessarily new.
Even if you do employ a 301 re-direct, you may see a temporary loss in search rankings, but this solution can help minimize the time it takes to re-gain those rankings and minimize the damage.
2. Custom Error Pages
To avoid any confusion at the end user level, custom error pages (404 error) should be employed to direct users to the appropriate pages.
Most hosting vendors offer you the opportunity to create a custom error page, so when a non-existent URL is reached, it will supply a page with the same interface as your web site and allow you to provide specific links to help the end user find the resource they are looking for. This is important, especially if you are changing page / domain names, as old search result references may take some time to disappear from the search indices.
Your custom error page should include the primary navigation of your web site, a link to a site map, a link to the home page, and it should provide the capability to search the site if applicable.
3. XML Files
Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft Live, all recognize XML formatted site map page. In addition, each one of these search engines offer personalized accounts that allow you to submit an XML site map, and they provide additional analytics based on search crawler response.
These XML site maps are beneficial for all web sites and can improve the speed of indexing when introducing new pages to a web site. For purposes of this discussion, the accounts available allow you to specify primary domains and help direct the search spiders to new pages on the site.
If you are changing domain names or re-designing your web site in a different programming language, this is an excellent resource to help minimize loss of potential search engine rankings.
4. Inbound Links
An important and often overlooked factor is inbound links. The number and quality of inbound links to your web site are very important in achieving high search engine rankings.
In some instances, you may be able to easily change your listing on a web site and update a new domain or page name. In more difficult cases, you may need to email a web master to make the request. Regardless, inbound links are too important to allow them to lapse or point to a long gone web site.
By following these four steps, you can minimize the negative impact on search rankings when changing a domain name or page names of your web site.
Our thanks to Don Kreski of
Kreski Marketing
for his help in editing this article.
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