Any Suggestions

[perfectseats]

Hi this is the first time I have posted ti the MSN forum, I have a few questions maybe some of the members can hel with.

1. what are the tools or commands to use with MSN to fin out you links and how many pages you have indexed. ex. google is site:www.perfectseats.com and link:www.perfectseats.com.

2. We have an old site www.holytickets.com we have not done any updates or changes to this site in over a year. For some reasons MSN really seems to like this site, it constantly ranks higher in the serps than our main site. So here is the problem - most of the pages are outdated. When this site was made we were making all pages (over 20,000) static, now all our pages are dynamic. So now the updated pages have different url. here is an example of the old page vs new page.
old page - http://www.holytickets.com/features/GeorgeStrait.htm
new page - http://holytickets.com/cheap_asp_eid-316_event-George+Strait_keyword-For+Sale_tickets_feature.htm

Does anyone have a suggestion how I can redirect the index for the old static pages to the new unindex dynamic pages.

thanks for any help.

[KeywordMonkey]

1. Use the MSN "search builder" options for "Site/Domain" and "Links to" to see what sites link to a domain (e.g. for SEW the link to results are http://beta.search.msn.co.uk/results.aspx?q=link%3Awww.searchenginewatch.com&FORM=QBHP from the MSN UK Search Beta).

2. The basic answer is setup 301 redirects (page permantently moved) - W3C reference on this (http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html) - to the new equivalent pages. Making this scalable will be the key depending on your server config etc. - best to ask specific questiosn about that here.

You will also need to update the incoming links from 3rd party sites to link to your new site (by contacting the site owners) with relevant, optimised link text.

Have a read of some of the threads here about link building and the articles at HighRankings (http://www.highrankings.com/articles.htm) about SEO in general.

[jackson992]

What I did is do a meta refresh on my old page that led to my new page so the visitor is automatically taken to the new page.

[KeywordMonkey]

IMO meta refresh is not such a good idea for a large number of pages (time to edit them etc. - it's easier to create a .htaccess with the redirects in one list).

Google and Yahoo! have both stated they prefer server-based redirects not HTML redirects. Server based redirects are meant to be used for exactly this purpose - see the W3C link above.

(Meta refreshes have in the past been used for dubious purposes, so I would steer clear.)

Google state you should use 301s here (http://www.google.com/webmasters/4.html) on their site. GoogleGuy said it back in 2003 here (http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/15453-1-15.htm#msg13).

In post 3 here (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=3003&highlight=redirect) Tim at Yahoo mentions how you should use 301s - documented here in the Yahoo blog (http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000053.html)and in his presentation here (http://www.ysearchblog.com/files/wmw2004/search-friendly-design.ppt), which has their redirects policy.

P.S. meta refreshes don't in my experience transfer PageRank, 301s can.

[jackson992]

I never can get the access ones to work right LOL. Also, it is much easier to add the meta refreshes for me since each feed I use has 4 pages that need to be changed. Hard to keep track of doing it server wide

[perfectseats]

1. Use the MSN "search builder" options for "Site/Domain" and "Links to" to see what sites link to a domain (e.g. for SEW the link to results are http://beta.search.msn.co.uk/results.aspx?q=link%3Awww.searchenginewatch.com&FORM=QBHP from the MSN UK Search Beta).

2. The basic answer is setup 301 redirects (page permantently moved) - W3C reference on this (http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html) - to the new equivalent pages. Making this scalable will be the key depending on your server config etc. - best to ask specific questiosn about that here.

You will also need to update the incoming links from 3rd party sites to link to your new site (by contacting the site owners) with relevant, optimised link text.

Have a read of some of the threads here about link building and the articles at HighRankings (http://www.highrankings.com/articles.htm) about SEO in general.

Thanks - your suggestions sound like the quickest way