Redoing pages already indexed by Google & Yahoo

Putting up new pages where old site used to be

[wiggy]

Hi, all. First let me say what a wonderful resource I have found webmasterworld to be. I've been reading here (yes, lurking) for some time now and finally have a question which i hope is worthy of posting for your responses...

I recently bought an expired domain that had over 300 pages already indexed by Google & Yahoo. By doing allinurl: at Google i am able to easily determine the page names, of course, and can now put up pages where the old ones used to be, and hopefully convert some of that traffic.

My question is, since the pages are already indexed, do I need to bother with sitemaps, index pages, interlinking the individual subpages, and other things for the Googlebot to keep spidering all those pages, or will Google be able to "find" all the pages in the future since it already has them listed in its system?

The pages are ranked pretty high at Yahoo already, and in the past whenever i've interlinked pages within a site, etc, i always seem to get booted off Yahoo. So I'd prefer to just leave the pages disconnected from each other and just put up new relevant pages, and hopefully keep those same high Yahoo listings.

My concern is that the pages will disappear from the G and Y indexes at some point if the pages aren't properly sitemapped or interlinked.... but I just don't know, since they're already indexed.

Looking forward to hearing from you. Thanks!

-wiggy

[Powdork]

Hey wiggy,
Welcome to WW. Its quite rude of us to let your first post go so long unanswered.
Here is a search [google.com] that might help you. Basically, while the pages may stay indexed, you won't, if things are working as they say, get credit for preexisting links to the domain. You would want to try your keyword searches to see how the pages are doing rather than allinurl. I am of the opinion that G and Y are sharing a large amount of data and being dropped from one may be followed by a drop from the other. I'll send you a sticky to show you what I mean as referenced by this thread [webmasterworld.com].
Interlinking within a domain (not including subdomains) shouldn't cause any problems, ever. Within a domain its not interlinking, its navigation.