At 04:49 PM 1/5/2011, J.A. Florian wrote: >When I took over a website, I left most of the filenames as the old >webmaster had them. But, I was looking through Google Webmaster Tools' >reports for my site and saw what is being picked up by keywords and feel I >should re-name some of those old pages. > >For example, one file was named: epkrnmap so the contents aren't easily >understood as being "east_pike_run_township_map" > >I know my filenames would be longer, but I think changing them now would >make it easier for visitors to find the atlas / township maps. > >I thought I could re-name each one to its true name and upload those as new >pages. > >Should I leave the old files/filenames/pages online for a few months until >the new_name_files get indexed into Google? Or will that be read as >duplicate content/dup pages? > >What is the best way to handle this issue? ========== >Judy, rather than underscroes, I would use hyphens to separate your >words. Why! if you website underline links in the body copy, users >can be confused when they see a page name that has underscores, >which show up right next to and just above the underline. Not sure >if this is still true but east_pike_run_township_map would be see as >all one word while east-pike-run-township-map would be seen as separate words. If you had the ability to create a permanent 301 redirect for each of the file names you changed, it would be no problem. The browser would just be redirected to the new file name and Google would pick it up fairly quickly. What I did on the DeWitt County Web site when I first redid it was go ahead and make the change in file names, making sure the links to the pages had to correct url and wait for Google to pick them up. I did not leave the old file up. If you rename the pages in FP, the links to those pages should be corrected on other pages. pat