Ideas & Strategies Adam Garlinger

When rebuilding or updating your website, an essential but often forgotten process is how old or renamed pages are handled. Often overlooked, these soon-to-be old pages are cached and displayed in Google results or the user's browser history, and if now non-existent will display as "not found", making your business look unprofessional and leading to frustration. An essential step that should be part of your website planning process, these now old pages can redirected to the new page, forwarded to the home page, built as landing pages, or built as custom "No Longer Exists but check this out", and used to provide visitors with a choice in navigation. With a strategy defined, you can use a mix of the three with a strategic plan of action.


For renamed pages you can use a redirect that sends visitors to the newly named pages. For example instead of "work" we named our pages "our-projects", and using a redirect, anyone who types in "work" would automatically be sent to the new pages. Because Google will cache or store the pages, the old page would be Not Found if it's removed, or contain info that makes the page look sloppy and unprofessional if the page is still on the server.

Instead of the redirect the old page could have been rebuilt with new information, but then we run the chance of Google penalizing the site because of duplicate content. Using an executed strategy with new content, the old page could serve as a marketing tool or to track visits to the site to measure or gain a better understanding of how the site is performing.

Had the page been a service or product no longer offered, instead of a redirect or page with new information, we could use it as a landing page explaining a new service or product that is superior, showcasing our value, and using the site to send visitors to the new service or product page.

The other option is creating a customized 404 Page Not Found page, with content and links, using the opportunity to showcase what sets us apart, and giving the user options where to go. This approach has a lot of potential opportunity in sending visitors on a planned journey, leading them to content and pages they may have missed.

With all the options available a strategy is essential, with the ability to quickly handle possible situations that have been overlooked. Whatever your decision is, this approach ensures your business isn't poorly represented, losing traffic, and potential clients. Both because of the poor representation and frustration.

This should be part of your processes going forward, with these processes put into action with new pages added, existing pages updated with changes, and older pages deleted. Name and Title tags for links should be updated when new links and pages are added to existing page and new pages, with relevant page information reflected in the sitemap file.