Is it worth renaming a files for seo purposes?

[Woolly]

Hi

I'm working of a site that is constantly being beaten by its competitors on crutial keywords.

I think the problem is partly due to the naming conversion of pages. For example, if the keyword was "green car" the typical page name they have used is "xyz_green_car.asp" [where xyz would be a term hardly ever searched on.

I have been debating on renaming a load of files in a directory so as to compete more effectively on a number of keyword phrases for SEO. The only thing that is affecting my decision is that these pages have been around for a long time.

Question is..., will it really be worth my while renaming at least some of these pages and creating 301 redirects?

[jimbeetle]

If "xyz" is a harmless, somewhat related term, I probably wouldn't do it, especially since the pages have a long history. There are always adverse effects when 301ing a bunch of pages and how long it takes to recover depends on how quickly the SEs catch up to the changes.

[AussieWebmaster]

I have 301ed a few hundred pages at once and had no problem... the transfer was pretty quick and the older pages stayed in the SERPs anyway so all worked

[SanDiegoSEO]

Personally I don't think it would be worth it to change old file names. However it might be benfiticial to set it up so new files are named that way. Also, use a hyphen instead of an underscore.

[AussieWebmaster]

If the old pages are in the search results and you need to have the site changed then you have to do a redirect of the old pages