Roscoe, we've dealt with this several times in the last few months:
We 301 EVERY old page to the most appropriate new page, even if multiple old
ones go to the same new one.
1. I could not find an answer anywhere about how long the old ones needed to
remain- I read in forums SEO's recommending 6 months- but technically it
could be the first time googlebot indexes the 301'd and new pages. Because
I don't know, we haven't removed the 301's.
2. We have had new pages get #1 results for the same kws that old ones got
the #1 result for within less than a week. We did this to an entirely new
domain name, actually. I believe in some cases a few fell because the
domain name was different- I think at some point the age of your new domain
affects the rankings. But if all yours are on the same site, it shouldn't
be as much of an issue. There could be an issue with the new pages' ages.
I don't know if the age of the new page gets credit from the age of the old
page or not. But I would think they'd hit stable SERP levels pretty
quickly... can't give you an exact timeframe, but I'm guessing less than a
month. Toolbar pagerank (TBPR) for each page is another issue- that might
change substantially in the next big TBPR update.
If anyone else knows more, look fw to learning- 301 info was not all
collected in one place, although check out
http://www.strategicmarketingmontreal.ca/otherbb/2008/03/google-and-3...
and also sphinn has a bunch of 301 redirect articles bookmarked:
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Asphinn.com+301
Hope that helps,
Brian Carter
On Wed, May 7, 2008 at 4:48 PM, roscoe <roscoetra
...@gmail.com> wrote:
> This is a little off the center of SEM, yet I felt many out there have
> some experience with my current situation and thus may have some
> benchmarks to offer.
> Situation. My e-merchandising client is in process of an entire re-
> make of the website. An unavoidable consequence is all the page URLs -
> save the home page - will change. The site is mature (10 years old)
> and a number of pages have earned their way into strong positions in
> organic search rankings and their sales are very heavily dependent
> upon this positioning. We are retaining tag and copy text that are
> relevant to SEO and plan to do a number of 301 redirects to give the
> new pages a leg up.
> I am aware that it takes a period of time before old-no-longer-active
> page URLs disappear from the search engine indexes. I am also aware it
> takes a period of time before the new page URLs appear in the indexes
> and appear in their "natural" ranking position.
> The info or experience I seek from you are: 1) How many months might
> we expect our no-longer-active Page URLs to remain in their search
> engine ranking position before they get removed? 2) How many months
> might we expect it to take for our new Page URLs to attain their
> natural level in search engine results?
> Greatly appreciate any insights.
> Thanks,
> Roscoe
--
Brian Carter
Fuel Interactive
Director of Search Marketing
http://www.fuelinteractive.com http://www.twitter.com/briancarter http://www.linkedin.com/in/briancarterms
