I'm re-designing a site. The folders are a mess and I'd like to tidy them up. If this is a url for one page http://www.website.com/example/example.html

This means a page called example.html sits inside a folder called example  thus giving the url above.

If I change the folder name to something else or move the file to another folder will search engines see it as a different page therefore losing rankings?

Or do they only count the file name plus main site http folder?

it will be like a missing page and a new page . the new page will not carry its PR or weight till it is fully indexed again.
Of course you can make good use of 301 redirects to minimise the impact.

korat once you do what you stated, the effected pages will indeed lose ranking. If you have a lot of pages you may want to consider doing it incrementally and over time. But I am still not sure what you are trying to accomplish.  Are your intentions to move all of the pages to the root or just renaming folders for the heck of it?

Hi,

I wonder if you could tell me why 301 redirect could minimize the impact, as I also want to rename some pages on my site.

Would 301 redirect transfer the back link counts so that sometime later the new page could achieve the same PR.


Thanks.

reladv wrote:

Hi,

I wonder if you could tell me why 301 redirect could minimize the impact, as I also want to rename some pages on my site..

In simple terms using a 301 will better your odds of having the old page stay in the index and drive traffic a bit longer and hopefully long enough to let the new page get settled in. And of course if the old url is clicked it will take the user to the new page

Would 301 redirect transfer the back link counts so that sometime later the new page could achieve the same PR

Thanks.

Yes, over time the new pages will get the link love. Also make sure you have the 301s in place before you re-name the page(s)

Check the inbound-links, if there are only a few, don´t mind, change the site-structure, create user- and searchenginefriendly urls without a spammy touch and start a linkbuilding campaign at least.

The duplicate-content effect:

Once you´re finished, put your new sites on your webspace.

Create a sitemap and submit it to google-webmasters.

Avoid duplicate content in the forefront by deleting the old sites and use the url-removal tool to let Google know which sites (404 vs. shiny new ones) are relevant for ranking.

Hi,
I agree with reladv.
Andy

reladv wrote:

Hi,

I wonder if you could tell me why 301 redirect could minimize the impact, as I also want to rename some pages on my site.

Would 301 redirect transfer the back link counts so that sometime later the new page could achieve the same PR.


Thanks.

aknet47 wrote:

Check the inbound-links, if there are only a few, don´t mind, change the site-structure, create user- and searchenginefriendly urls without a spammy touch and start a linkbuilding campaign at least.

The duplicate-content effect:

Once you´re finished, put your new sites on your webspace.

Create a sitemap and submit it to google-webmasters.

Avoid duplicate content in the forefront by deleting the old sites and use the url-removal tool to let Google know which sites (404 vs. shiny new ones) are relevant for ranking.

Thanks for your advice.

The problem is that the most important page - index page - is my concern. I originally have a /index.html but later for programming reason, (I include a PHP script to run RSS newsfeed) I change to create a new /index.php in an attemplt to replace the older .html file.  The index page got hundreds if not thousands of links, so it must be carefully taken care of before really getting rid of from the server.

Meanwhile I have two running at the same time.

Obviously, SE, such as google treats them as 3, yes 3 urls, namely,

http://best-relationship-advice.com/  - PR3 (the file is in fact /index.php but the PR is different so it is obvious that google treats it differently)
http://best-relationship-advice.com/index.php - PR2
http://best-relationship-advice.com/index.html - PR3

Moreover I was told that SE also treat http://www and http:// as differenct urls. So in the eyes of google, I have 6 url of duplicate contents! 

I do not agree with some seo experts saying google would not penalize duplicate content but simply only record the most original copy, which is contrary to the experience in my site.

I wonder anyone could advise.