Site architecture - link structure and 301 redirect issues

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[Shrike99]

Hi,

First of all, thanks for all the work on WebMasterWorld, I always find great information here.

I have a problem now, help would be greatly appreciated.

I registered a domain name 8 years ago, on which I did put lots of stuff: family pictures, information about my family, and some jokes. The personal stuff was on www.example.com/index.html and the main page of the jokes were on www.example.com/fun.html

Over the years, I got hundred of links pointing to www.example.com/fun.html, which became a big humor page. When it became very popular, I then removed all personal informations and pictures from www.example.com/index.html because of privacy concerns. All there is on that page now are links to www.example.com/fun.html and links pointing to some jokes pages(www.example.com/funny-cats.html) by example.

So now that my site is all related to humor, but my "main page" is still www.example.com/fun.html, which I find very unprofessional.
What I would like to do is
a) put the content of the "main page" (fun.html) in the index.html file (while removing the content of my current index.html file)
b) do a 301 redirect of www.example.com/fun.html to www.example.com/index.htm

Would it be as simple as that?

Does it matter if all of my hundreds of sub-page links back to www.example.com/fun.htm? The 301 redirect should be able to handle this, and Google should transfer the pagerank accordingly, right?

I hope the explanation is clear... If not, please say so, I will try to explain more.

Thanks a lot.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 1:48 am (utc) on Jan. 30, 2008]
[edit reason] changed to example.com. It can never be owned. [/edit]

[tedster]

One clarification would help - when you simply enter example.com into the browser, does the server now resolve that to fun.html? If so, how does this happen - a redirect, and of what kind technically? - or by fun.html being added to the server's list of possible index urls?

Or, if you don't automatically go to fun.html, what edactly does happen?

But no matter what currently happens at the domain root level, I would not lightly try to send so much link juice through a 301 redirect. You might consider creating a small amout of content for a new index.html page. The short personal story of how this site grew, much as you told it here, could be all you need.

As a general rule, try not to change a url - especially one that has attracted a lot of backlinks. 301 redirects are not like plumbing connections to flow link juice. Because of the potential for manipulation, their processing by Google is not simply an automatic pass-through.

[Shrike99]

Thanks for the answer Tedster.

The answer to your question:
Right now, if you go to example.com, the page displayed is example.com/index.html, without much content, mostly a link to example.com/fun.html

Argh. I get it though about the important thing:
"their processing by Google is not simply an automatic pass-through". That's pretty much of a no-go I guess then. I'm not sure I want risk the traffic...

Thanks a lot for the explanations Tedster!

[jd01]

Why not set the server to have all requests for example.com & example.com/index.html sent to example.com/fun.html?

Basically, redirect the other way...

There is no rule that says your index page has to be called index.html, or the root of your site (example.com/) has to resolve internally to index.html or it's information, so have some, uh, fun and redirect the other way. ;)

Something like the following should get you there:
RewriteRule ^(index\.html)?$ http://www.example.com/fun.html [R=301,L]

Justin

[steveb]

Just do the 301. That's it's purpose. After the 301 is picked up you should change all the internal links to from "fun.html" to "/"

There are a lot of old domains out there that were built before the current "right" way was figured out. Leaving an old domain the old way is bad business. Fix it, move on.

Google is very fast with 301s these days, and ranking is usually not effected, except in a positive way if you move something to a more sensible URL location.

[Shrike99]

Geez, now I'm confused! :-)

Well, I'll think about it some more, since I break my personal records these days with Adsense, so I don't want to take any chances. And I want to choose carefully what my Main page will be (www.example.com/fun.html or www.example.com)

I'd rather have www.example.com, but it seems riskier than just 301-ing www.example.com to www.example.com/fun.html will more inbound links to www.example.com/fun.html and hundreds of internal links to www.example.com/fun.html

Thanks Again.

[steveb]

Think about the long term health and desirability of your domain. Redirecting to an internal page looks amateurish and isn't what anybody would ever want.

Reclaim your index page, get your most important content on it, then move on into the future.

[g1smd]

I wouldn't risk changing the URL for the content from "/fun.html" to "/" in this case.

I would leave well alone, and develop new content at "/". I would redirect requests for "/index.html" to "/" though.

[Onat]

Yes, i think it will be a good idea and less risk on your part. make a content that will give highlights to your important page which is pointing to another page. hope you get my point...

[tedster]

Onat, that's a very good point. One of my clients makes and sells some widely used products. They used to just delete the urls for discontinued models and redirect to a rather generic page. By keeping the original url live and revising the content to offer a choice of resources, they are now able to retain important Google traffic and convert some of those visitors to the upgraded version.

You might think this kind of idea is obvious - but it's surprising to me how often the obvious isn't obvious at all until someone explains it. Have you ever noticed that the average person doesn't know that links are useful to get good rankings?

[Marcia]

There's a mod_rewrite thread going on about this now, and it's an interesting issue with regard to PR if there's an internal rewrite serving www.example.com when fun.html is requested by user agents:

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