Renaming HTML pages and keep old pages too...

[DBurrows]

We are currently working through some SEO tips that require us to change the name of the product page, this is fine and easily done, however we currently have PPC campaigns and newsletters on the go, as a result if i change the page names the links from the ads and newsletter will be invalid!! (the PPC ads take 3 days for the changes to become valid, hence why i cant just change them to match the new names as yet.)

What i need to do is change the names but keep the old pages with the old names on the webserver as well.

Im sure there must be an easy way but i cant work it out!

Thanks in advance

[I-CC]

Just as a quick tester only - try changing one page filename to a new name, and then do a site update, NOT web refresh and see if you can still visit the original filename (i.e. it has not been cleaned off the server)...

Might be an idea so long as web refresh is not implemented which should clean out the files - also need to be sure that you do not see a cached copy of the original - so do a couple of CTRL F5's.

[DBurrows]

Well it was a nice idea in theory, however when i update the site i notice it purges files, hence my old html pages are removed prior to uploading the new one.

Any other ideas ?

[I-CC]

OK - worth a try -

put the filename back and update to get it back to normal.

Then, FTP into your account and find the files that you need to rename and download them to your computer in ASCII mode into a separate folder.

Then, back in Actinic change the page filenames and update the site.


Once the new filenames are online, copy the ASCII copies of the filenames you FTP'd off the site earlier (i.e. the filenames you want to keep until your CPC is sorted out), into the Site1 folder and add then all to the Additional Files directive and then update the site again for those to be uploaded to the site.

In theory (again) you should now have the new amended filenames and also your original files up there also...

Hope this one works LOL

[DBurrows]

It seems i can download all the html files from my ftp then specify them as additional files.... seems to work ok unless anyone can tell me otherwise

[Mike Hughes]

I'd recommend setting up a 301 permanent redirect from the old page name to the new name.

That way anyone trying to go to the old page will be sent to the new page and, more importantly, it tells the search engines that the page has moved and stops them thinking you're site is broken or has duplicate pages.

Mike

[DBurrows]

Heh great minds think alike.. seems we posted almost at the same time, .... and its still working!