301 Redirects – Important when changing a site file structure
When working on a real estate website (or any other really) sometimes you want to make changes to the structure of a site. What this means is basically, if you change the format of the file names of your site, then you want to make SURE that the web people you work with redirect EACH PAGE of the old site to the corresponding page on the new site.
Why is this important?
The first reason is that you want users who happen to click on links to the old pages that may be out there to be able to find the RIGHT information on the new site. This makes sense. They should not go to the home page or a generic looking page that say 404 Error File not here… Yes, it takes time to do this but it is important.
I recently saw a major real estate site NOT do this and lose a major amount of traffic. (Which is the OTHER reason.) When a site has pages that no longer exist, eventually they get dropped from the search engines and all of the traffic that you were getting from the search engines goes away. Not good.
Doing redirects is EASY but it takes time. Many sites have the ability to do redirects right in the content management system (my real estate site does.). But if that is not the case, your website administrator will be able to do it. Yes it make cost you an hour or two, but it is worth it.
It costs you too much in GETTING people to visit your site to just make them go away confused and frustrated.
John Allen is the broker and owner of the Sarasota Florida Real Estatebrokerage Allen Real Estate Services, Inc. He also owns and operates The Sarasota Lifestyle, a local community blog about news and events in Sarasota Florida. John enjoys golf and time with his family and friends when he is not working with clients or on the web.
