Moving installed shopping cart up one level on sever

[jrozsa +]

swingset - Yes, 301 redirects are the way you would preserve value from the previous URLs to the current URLs. There are different ways to do this, but you likely don't need to redirect thousands of URLs. The main reason to do 301 redirects are to transfer the "link juice" from one URL to a new one. I doubt you have inbound links pointing to thousands of sites. For most of these, a new sitemap will be sufficient. You will want a general 301 redirect (probably pointing to the home page or better yet, a category page), but a 1 to 1 mapping is not necessary. You will want to go through and identify sites that have a lot of inbound links and specifically set up 301 redirects for them so that you can keep the benefit of the inbound links. That's really all you need to worry about. Let me know if you have any questions on this. As you may have guessed, I'm an SEO guy (I own an SEO firm, etc.).

[swingsetmall +]

Thanks for the info

We did finally figure out how to redirect the old directory to the new one by editing the .htaccess file. It was very simple, in fact. So now our links on Google go to the right page rather than a 404 or the home page. Hopefully, since we submitted the new sitemap on Google Webmasters, the links should be updated soon.

[babyREFLUX +]

Originally Posted by jrozsa

but you likely don't need to redirect thousands of URLs. The main reason to do 301 redirects are to transfer the "link juice" from one URL to a new one. I doubt you have inbound links pointing to thousands of sites. For most of these, a new sitemap will be sufficient. You will want a general 301 redirect (probably pointing to the home page or better yet, a category page), but a 1 to 1 mapping is not necessary.

Can't agree with you Joe.

If a store owner has a key product that is linked to, from a few hundred forums then they will want a 301 redirect directly to the new product URL.

A general link to a category page or home page is a sure-fire way to lose business or confuse the visitor as they will be at a page they didn't expect.

Of course when you are talking of thousands of pages changes then you have a dilemma - the easy way is to mass redirect the lot - or you can be selective and deal with products, categories, brands at an individual level.

Depends on the market you are in and the type of inbound links you have but it is not as straightforward as doing a mass redirect.

[jrozsa +]

That is exactly right Jonathan. I must not have explained that correctly. I was trying to say not to worry about doing the one to one mapping from old product page to new product page for all 1,000 or more product pages. But you should absolutely do the one to one mapping for any key products that have inbound links pointing to them (even if it is only one inbound link coming from a highly respected source such as Yahoo or CNN or something).

I was saying it is highly unlikely that most people have a significant number of inbound links pointing to all 1,000 or so individual product pages, but yes definitely do the individual 301 redirecting for the key products that DO have the inbound links and then mass redirect the rest. It takes some serious analysis to come up with the best strategy and determination of best use of 301 redirects. ONe should balance this while keeping in mind that a large .htaccess file put a pretty big resource overhead on the server as well.

I think we do agree completely - I just didn't do a good job of clearly explaining what I was trying to say in the previous post.