Site Redesign - Inbound Links
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Hello all.
What would be some of the best practices or good resources on site redesign while maintaining inbound links?
We would hate to have the natural, organic links to the site we have generated over the past 3 years to all of a sudden become broken.
The domain is not changing but the URL structure very well may. For example, www.domain dot com/blog/postabouttopic which has many inbound links may move to www.domain dot com/news/blog/postabouttopic
Is it a matter of simply using 301 redirects from the old pages to the new pages? Is there any issues to be aware of when having hundreds of 301 redirects?
Is there a best practice? A good site that explains this in detail?
Thank you for your time! Have a great day!
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Hi Kevin,
In my experience the answer to this question depends on a few things:
- Where the links come from
- The website owner's relationships with the websites that link to them
- The amount of effort that can be put into moving all of those links
Of course all pages should be 301'd just in case, but the problem with this is that the value of links passing through a 301 reduces over time. So all the value of all the hard work you've put into SEO in the past will decrease.
What has worked for me in the past is running a report through Open Site Explorer, looking at the domains linking to the site, and seeing whether you and your client can contact any of them to get the link changed after go-live. If someone can dedicate time to this and the people linking to you are amenable to changing then it's a really good way of getting the maximum value for those old links. And perhaps rekindling old relationships while you do so, getting more links and more revenue
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