Should I 'redirect' my changed URLs?

[painterskip]

after reading a ton of articles both here and elsewhere, I consider myself a relatively 'new' website creator, even though I've been creating for several years. I obviously haven't been paying much attention to optimization according to Google, until now. As an artist, I first look at page design and flow...

Having said that, I recently created a website with maybe 40 pages. I had the urls set up as follows...basically.

www.example.html/gallery.html
www.example.html/about.html
www.example.html/blue.html
www.example.html/green.html
www.example.html/yellow.html
etc., etc.

After starting up Webmaster Tools and reading various forums AND looking to see what my competitors, who show up on the first page for our keyword, I decided to do this a few weeks in.....
www.example.com/example-gallery.html
www.example.com/example-about.html
www.example.com/example-blue.html
www.example.com/widgets-green.html
www.example.com/example-yellow.html
etc., etc.

Implying here that "example" is my keyword.

So what I did was actually remove the old pages from the server so I wouldn't have duplicate pages. and no, of course, Googles is reporting a slew (14 for now) of 'pages not found'.

As of this writing, Google isn't showing any backlinks and it's only been a month since I got 'serious' with this site. I had previously uploaded an XML sitemap and then updated it when I changed the url structure.

My question is, or rather statement, is that after reading about 301 redirects (which doesn't look easy) and another post here about "server header status code"., I'm not sure whether to leave it be since the actual old pages are not there, or?

Thanks in advance

[edited by: tedster at 5:42 pm (utc) on Mar. 2, 2009]
[edit reason] switch to example.com - it cannot be owned like widgets [/edit]

[tedster]

Hello Skip, and welcome to the forums.

First thing I'd say is not to expect a keyword showing twice in the url to give you much boost over the single keyword that's already in the domain name.

However, if you decide to stay with the new naming scheme, then yes, I would normally suggest you roll up your sleeves and learn how to create a 301 redirect for your old urls. But you've got a new website, not an established and ranking website.

As long as the 14 old urls are getting a 404 response from your server, then there's no big problem - especially because those urls have no backlinks. You'll continue to see the errors reported in Webmaster Tools as information for you, just in case you did not know that you dropped those urls.

[painterskip]

Thanks, Tedster

As I mentioned, I was making some changes based on what I saw elsewhere, but as I read more, and ask questions, well, I know more:-) Hopefully it will steer me in the right direction.

Re the old urls no generating a 404 response, since those pages had their urls changed, and the sitemap as well, will Google penalize the site if I just leave it as is? I guess that was what I was concerned with. It's been hard enough trying to claw my way up from seemed to be the bottom of the pile:-)

[g1smd]

Google will request those URLs for a long time in to the future. There's no penalty with that.

Just make sure that there are no inbound links to any of those URLs. Redirect those that have.

[painterskip]

Thanks again...

[vietseoguy]

First thing I'd say is not to expect a keyword showing twice in the url to give you much boost over the single keyword that's already in the domain name.
@Teds: have you experienced ins this type or URLs and get any penalty yet? Some Vietnamese sites repeat keyword in its URL twice but still rank high in Google.com.vn.
Ex: domain.com/the-film-title/the-film-title/view/id/

[tedster]

Never saw a penalty but never saw an advantage either. Once is all it takes, especially when it's the domain name!

[painterskip]

So....how would you know if your site was penalized? Where do you look?
(If you feel I should ask this question as a new topic, feel free to move it:-)

[tedster]

That question and many others you may be interested in are addresses in the Hot Topics area [webmasterworld.com], which is always pinned to the top of this forum's index page.

Happy reading!

[johnnie]

So....how would you know if your site was penalized? Where do you look?

I have had reliable results [webmasterworld.com] searching for 'yourdomain' minus the tld. If that query puts you beyond #5 or so (below mismathcing domain names and subdomains), something is likely amiss.