Why Fear? Now Change Your Filenames Without Disturbing Search Engines/Visitors And Rank Well

By now, you know that to rank well in the Search Engines, you need to have the keyword in your URL's directory name and filename, if not in the domain name as well.

So, if you want to target a keyword, say, 'Woolen Socks', the best way to do it is (a) to have a domain name that contains the word 'woolen socks' in it (like: BuyWoolenSocks.com), (b) place the information page in the 'woolen-socks' directory and(c) write the filename as 'woolen-socks.html'. So the URLshould look like:

http://www.BuyWoolenSocks.com/Woolen-Socks/Woolen-Socks.html

This definitely gives you much better chance to rank well insearch engines with the keyword 'Woolen Socks'. There areother aspects too which help you to rank well, but inserting the keywords in domain name, directory and file namedefinitely give you a boost.

It's not always possible to have a separate domain namefor each and every product. But, you can easily change thedirectory name and filename to match with your keywords.

But you are afraid to change the alrealy popular URLs for three reasons: (a) you have to manually insert the redirect code inevery page, (b) a standard 404 page may lead visitors nowhereor disinterest them and (c) annoying search engines with theconstant 404 error page codes so much so that they mightban the site.

But there is no need to worry. Internet has enough provisionsto meet every technical need. The only thing you have to knowwhere to look. You can change the filenames withoutdisturbing anything by simply changing one single file.

USE 301 REDIRECT

A 301 redirect is the most efficient and spider/visitor friendlystrategy around for web sites that are hosted on servers runningApache (check with your hosting service if you aren't sure). It'snot that hard to implement and it should preserve your searchengine rankings for that particular page. If you HAVE to changefile names or move pages around, it's the safest option.

A 301 code inteprets 'moved permanently'.

HOW TO DO IT?

Locate a file named .htaccess in your public_html folder (homepage folder). If it's not there, just open Notepad (or any text editor:which saves files in .txt mode) and write the following line for each filename change:

redirect 301 /OldFolder/OldFilename.html http://www.you.com/NewFolder/NewFilename.html

Obviously you need to replace 'OldFolder', 'OldFilename.html','NewFolder', 'NewFilename' with your own old and new filenames.

For example: if you had a page whose URL is: http://www.YourDomain.com/wp-01.html and the new page's URL is: http://www.YourDomain.com/Woolen-Socks/Woolen-Socks.html write the following code in your .htaccess file:

redirect 301 /wp-01.html http://www.YourDomain.com/Woolen-Socks/Woolen-Socks.html

If you had a page whose URL is: http://www.YourDomain.com/wp/wp-01.html and the new page's URL is: http://www.YourDomain.com/Woolen-Socks/Woolen-Socks.html just write the following code in your .htaccess file:

redirect 301 /wp/wp-01.html http://www.YourDomain.com/Woolen-Socks/Woolen-Socks.html

The line is written like this: 'redirect 301' + 'one spacebar space' + 'old file directory/filename' +'one spacebar space' + 'new file URL' + '[Enter]'

You can write as many lines as you wish!

If you already have .htaccess file in your folder, write these lines AFTER all other codes already existed there.

Save the file. Check that the filename has not become: .htaccess.txt. If it's so, rename the file to .htaccess and uploadit to your public_html directory.

Now, open your browser (Aren't you using FireFox? Oh boy,you're missing a lot!!) and browse to your old filename. Yougot redirected to the new page location!!

Voila!!

Search engines read your old filenames as 301 code and nota 404. Eventually they should drop the old filenames andindex new ones.

Your visitors seamlessly visit your new page following theold filename.

You save lots of time if you have really huge files to change.

Great. Isn't it?

Subhendu Sen is the owner and webmaster ofhttp://www.IndHosts.Net/hosting.html - A Low-Cost WebHosting Service Provider with Apache Server - and is in the business of web hosting since 1998. He also owns othersites of interest : http://www.TheWebContent.com - AnArticle Directory and http://www.PopAccount.com - A Free Email Address directory.