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japanesecowboy
03-20-2008, 03:27 PM
Hi All,

I have a site that has over 1500 external links pointing to deep pages with sparse content etc(basically just pictures and a few words). The files are all named horribly, and I am going to organize the structure of the site. This would mean that many pages will be combined into relevant pages which will make the site much easier to navigate.

Now I don't want to lose the visitors that come from the external links nor the link value, so should I 301 each page to the relevant new page or should I make a custom 404 that will send all the users that came from external sites or SERP to my site's homepage? Also, if I were to go with a custom 404 that points to the homepage, will the search engines be confused that a page that was named /12345.htm is now the homepage?

Please advise :confused:

jimbeetle
03-20-2008, 05:26 PM
Best bet is to 301 the old pages to the relevant new pages. This will preserve link juice to whatever extent it can and avoids all confusion among the SEs.

japanesecowboy
03-20-2008, 05:29 PM
Ah! Thanks! :D