Redirect 301 a scary Google history - moving forward

[richiep]

Hi,
I started working on commerce about a year and a half ago. This site has been around since about 1997 and has had numerous web masters. When I took over there were many inconcintencies in file names and the extensions used. So the first thing I did was to make all that stuff consistent by giving all the pages an .shtml file extension. In addition I added a 301 redirect in the .htaccess file pointing the old addresses to the new ones.

This seemed to work fine until last September, I don't remember the exact date, when Google danced and knocked many of the top keywords for this site off the chart. Those keywords have bounced back but they still aren't as strong as they once were.

Now the client is moving to a new CMS and shopping cart system. To do this will require another round of 301 redirects. I'm very nervous about doing this as I know another drop in search rankings will drive my client and myself nuts.

Everything I've read about 301 redirects suggests that they work as intended.

Here are my questions:

* Was the drop that I experienced last fall just a Google thing or was it related to my redirects?
* If I do another round of redirects would it be "safe" to get rid of the old ones which were first set over a year ago?
* Should I gradually introduce the new redirects or do them all at once?
* Any other considerations?

Thanks
Rich

[JohnW]

>Was the drop that I experienced last fall just a Google thing or was it related to my redirects?

Hard to say without more info, but last fall was an issue for many people who had no redirects ;-)

> If I do another round of redirects would it be "safe" to get rid of the old ones which were first set over a year ago?

I dont know about redirecting redirected pages, hmmm... what about changing the old redirects to also point to the newest page?

Be nice to hear some comments on this from others.


>Should I gradually introduce the new redirects or do them all at once?

Depending on your situation, if you don't do them all at once, you might risk a aduplicate content problem between new/old.

>Any other considerations?

You could make sure the new pages show up as www.domain-name.com/name/ and you will not have to worry about file name extensions changing in the future. There are other good reasons to do it this way as well.

Other considerations continued - don't forget about Yahoo and MSN.