Completely new site

Do we retain old pages?

[stevew]

Hi,

I've just completely revamped our web site, going right back to basics and putting together something upon which I can build in the future, following all SE-friendly, ethical rules. Did I feel good! So I deleted the old site and uploaded the new pages.

The new site has nothing in common with the old - new names for pages, new navigation, just about the only thing remaining is that the home page is still called index.asp (though it's completely different in every other respect)

The site has a PR of 4 at present, with no worthwhile listings anywhere, although it's on a few SE databases.

Will the new site, with its "vanished" pages and content, wreck our PR, or our old listings?
Should I create new pages (with the old page names) that link back into the site (surely doorway pages?)

Or am I just being paranoid ...

Advice would be very welcome!

[jackofalltrades]

U should be ok...the site will just be indexed and the changes would be updated in the next update anyway.

If the content or theme of your site has changed dramatically, then you may want to change any inboud links, ie move to a more appropriate category in directories.

JOAT

[Macguru]

Hi stevew,

I always check the performance of older pages of any given site before rebuilds, just to make sure we dont loose too much traffic out of some gems sitting on search engines indexes.

If you delete those pages, users will get 404 from serps.

Do you have such an analysis handy? Do you have a custom 404 page?

[stevew]

Thanks for your feedback : much appreciated.

For the SE traffic the old site got, I'd be happy to lose it : I'm more worried about being deleted from any indexes because I now hope to build on them.

I've heard people talking about custom 404 pages, but my skills (? OK - interests...) are on the client side, not server side. Is there a simple way of getting this done?

[Macguru]

>>but my skills (? OK - interests...) are on the client side, not server side.

He he!

Sitting in the same boat here. :) I am clueless about server stuff, so I ask the server guys. They usually give me " OK, what do you want? ".

This mean you should design the custom 404 yourself and ask them to do the server stuff.
A custom 404 page should include your main nav. linking to the new site. A benefit to both visitors and spiders getting it.

[stevew]

Thanks again.

I've just emailed my ISP with the requirement!