Search Engine Optimisation

below is a useful bit of search engine information from http://www.businessol.com/seo-blog/ by a guy called  Ray Comstock.

http://www.businessol.com/seo-blog/2008/06/single-most-important-seo-strategy-for.html for article


"Once you publish content, don't move it! What I mean is, don't change the URL where the content lives. I have recently had a client who has an internal content management and production system that causes URLs to move (change) after a certain amount if time. They couldn't understand why their search listings kept fluctuating so much. They have since developed a migration strategy for their content (which consists of setting up a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one) in the event they have to change their URLs.

The point is though, changing your URLs disconnects your link connectivity unless you implement 301 redirects. Search engine rankings, especially those of Google are hugely dependent on links, especially relevant external links. But moving the content means that any links that you might have had, are no longer seen unless you implement a redirect. And even though 301 redirects work, they take time to do so and can quickly become tedious, if not difficult to manage. But make sure you use a 301 redirect (permanent) which passes Page Rank versus a 302 redirect (temporary and bad for SEO) which does not pass Page Rank. If you don't know what kind of redirect you have, use this http header check function on your URL with the redirect to find out.

The best idea though, is not changing the location of your content once its published.

Update: Please note that we are not saying that all missing pages should 301 to a certain page. Pages that do not really exist should still have error 404s and not 301s. Only moved pages that existed in an old URL should 301 to a new URL."