Michael J
Senior Member
Success comes with knowledge. Follow the leaders who have the knowledge and success will be yours.
Posts: 163
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Post by Michael J on Dec 19, 2007 16:18:04 GMT -5
I just changed file names for all my sub pages for SEO purposes.
Before I got them all uploaded to vdeck, Google crawled my site.
The good news is they gave me double indent listing for top work at home articles center. #2&3 on first page with my articles page listed first.
The bad news is when you click on link to articles page you get 404 error page cannot be found.
I'm assuming this is because they indexed before my new files were uploaded, because you can still access articles page by going to home page then clicking articles page link.
Is there any way I can fix this? I'm so happy to have this listing but don't like that you can't get to page by clicking that #2 listed link.
Michael J
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Post by troyzone on Dec 19, 2007 20:22:30 GMT -5
Hi Michael, I would suggest placing a redirect page on your web host under the old articles page's name, so that when someone clicks on that page from Google it will redirect them to your current articles page. In fact, it would probably be a good idea to do this for your old page name any time you change the file names of your web pages, just in case anyone has your old page bookmarked or it is otherwise indexed or cached under the old page name. This way, the old link will still work as well, but it will take them to the new page automatically. You probably already know how to create redirect pages, but I have included a bit of info on how to do this just in case it's needed. There are many ways to redirect visitors, but probably just a basic http meta-refresh redirect page would be fine in a case like this, as it is one of the simplest and most basic (and most universally supported) redirect methods. For this method, all you need to do is create a new page and put the following single line of code in it, then save it as old-pagename.html (rename your page accordingly) and upload it to your web host: <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=http://www.tophomeworld.com/new-pagename.html"> Make sure to edit the above code so that it contains the new name of your page that you wish visitors to be redirected to, and of course be sure to specify any directory or folder names (if applicable) in the URL. Basically, just make sure that you have the direct link to the new page in your redirect code. Another easy way to redirect visitors to the new page is to add a line to the .htaccess file stored in your web host's root (public_html) directory, if such a file is present. This is basically a special file that contains instructions for web browsers and bots visiting your site. As an alternative to the above method, you could instead edit your .htaccess file and add the following line to it to redirect visitors to your new articles page: Redirect /olddirectory/old-pagename.html www.tophomeworld.com/new-pagename.htmlRemember of course to edit the file names and directory paths as needed for the page that you are redirecting. There are many other redirect methods as well, several of which are discussed at the following link, but the above information should suffice in this case: erichw33.proboards53.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=web&thread=1176248868&page=1Hope this helps. Troy
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Michael J
Senior Member
Success comes with knowledge. Follow the leaders who have the knowledge and success will be yours.
Posts: 163
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Post by Michael J on Dec 21, 2007 2:01:09 GMT -5
Hi Troy, Thanks for all the info. As a matter of fact no, I don't know how to create redirects as I have not had the need yet. I followed these instructions you provided: For this method, all you need to do is create a new page and put the following single line of code in it, then save it as old-pagename.html (rename your page accordingly) and upload it to your web host: <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=http://www.tophomeworld.com/new-pagename.html"> My old articles link was this: www.tophomeworld.com/articles/index.htmlNew link was this: www.tophomeworld.com/workathomearticles/index.htmlI made a copy and renamed it: articles.html I made redirect code read: <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=http://www.tophomeworld.com/workathomearticles.html"> Redirect page was loaded to my vdeck directory named: workathomearticles. This didn't work. What have I done wrong that is so obvious I'm going to look really stupid? Michael J
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Post by troyzone on Dec 21, 2007 4:09:21 GMT -5
Michael, It appears that you have a directory name "articles" in your old link and a directory name "workathomearticles" in your new link, and the page name is index.html in both cases. The redirect code you have above contains www.tophomeworld.com/workathomearticles.html which does not match what your new link actually is...it has to match exactly. You have to take both the directory and page names into account when creating your redirect pages, just like with any other web page, and of course, the redirect page has to go into the *old* directory, not the new one, because the redirect page is taking the place of the old, moved page. It's like a sign for a browser or bot saying, "This page has moved, go here instead...(insert new link here)" and the new page will then load automatically. I tried your two links above and your old link actually worked for me and the new link actually gave me a HTTP 404 Not Found error, so maybe you just haven't actually moved the page as of yet. If your old and new links are going to be as you specified above, then you would have to proceed as follows... Your old articles link given above contains the path /articles/index.html so you would have to go into your public_html root directory, create an articles directory if it does not already exist, then inside the articles directory create a index.html page with the above-mentioned redirect code in it. You're basically replacing the old articles page with the redirect page. The redirect code would have to contain your new link above: www.tophomeworld.com/workathomearticles/index.htmlOf course, the articles page would actually have to exist at that new link in the /workathomearticles directory, index.html page inside that directory, in order for visitors to be able to view it. Like I said above, the new link gave me an error, but perhaps you're still using the old link at present and just haven't moved your page to the new location as of yet. When creating redirects, you're following the same rules as far as the location of your pages and the paths or links to them go, you're just substituting the above single line of redirect code for actual page content. Then, when someone loads the page at the old location containing the redirect code, their browser then automatically loads the page specified in the redirect code as if the visitor clicked a link to the new page immediately after loading the old page...the redirect code just makes the browser do it automatically. Troy
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Michael J
Senior Member
Success comes with knowledge. Follow the leaders who have the knowledge and success will be yours.
Posts: 163
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Post by Michael J on Dec 21, 2007 7:59:35 GMT -5
Troy, I failed to mention in my first post that I had changed my directory names as well to match my direct links to pages. Now I see why redirect didn't work. How could it when old directories didn't exist anymore? The reason the old articles link worked for you is because after my last post I changed all directory and file names back to original. I'm pretty sure I understand how to do redirects now, so hopefully when I do them in the future I'll have no problems. The whole SEO process is a daily exhausting learning experience! I was trying to get all my pages indexed by linking them together with keywords, which is working. I just I went one step too far by renaming directories (obviously unnecessary) as it's only the file names and link paths that matter. Anyway, thanks for all your help. Much appreciated as usual. Have a great day! Michael J
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