Do I need 301s?

[steakaphagus]

My site went live 3 weeks ago and pages have now been indexed by Google. Having read up on some SEO, I now realise that I should rename my folders and files to use better keywords.
If I do this, should I use 301s to redirect to the newly named pages, or does it not really matter at this early stage? (I've had v.few visits and no inbound links yet as far as I know). Also, could I be penalised for duplicate content if I just upload the newly named pages (with same content)?
Thanks

[webgal23]

I'm not sure that the use of keywords in the file names makes as much of a difference now as it once did for SEO.
So if you're going to rename everything, I'd do it only if it makes sense and will make it easier for you to manage the site down the road.
Whatever you do - Don't duplicate the content, yes you will be penalized for that as the search engines will pick only one of the articles (if any) to index. If you can manage it, you should do the 301's. Although your site is new and has no links to it yet, you say Google has indexed it, so unless you have thousands of pages, I would go with the 301.

[steakaphagus]

Thanks webgal. Think I will just leave things be! Seems like too much grief for v.little gain.....

[bilalseo]

as you said that google has indexed site pages, and if you wanna change all file names, please use 301 redirect.

[mayest]

steakaphagus, I would rethink your decision. The time to get things right is at the beginning. If filename and directory changes would make things easier for you or your visitors, then do it now. The 301's are pretty easy, especially if you don't have a ton of pages yet. Someday you will probably want to "do it right" and it will probably be more difficult after your site has grown, has lots of backlinks, and is fully indexed.

When I started my site it was poorly organized. When I went from static HTML to a CMS, I pretty much had to reorganize. At the time I didn't know how to use .htaccess and 301's, but it was pretty easy to learn and I was able to use some simple regular expressions to dramatically cut down on the number of lines of rewrites that I needed. The Apache forum here [webmasterworld.com] is an excellent resource to get the help that you might need.

[steakaphagus]

Thanks guys. To be honest, I think the structure of the site isn't too bad at the mo. The renaming was purely from an SEO point of view, as I thought that more appropriate keywords in my file names would help the search engines.
This doesn't seem to matter too much though from the SEO point of view?

[abbackman]

301 redirect doesn't influence seo from google said, We can feel free to use it for new web or new domain,