One
challenging link related issue you may find yourself facing is when you
have a site that's been around for some time, maybe even for years, and
then you make a major change to your content delivery system, such as
- Moving
to a new content delivery system that alters all your URLS
- Changing
domains
- Major
site reorganization
For large
sites with hundreds of inbound links this can be overwhelming. When every
URL on your site changes that means every link from every other site to
your site becomes useless, unless you take steps to prevent that from happening.
The steps to take will vary depending on your particular situation.
The best case scenario is a domain name change where all directories and
file names stay the same. Then, the 301
redirect approach makes sense, and there's no need to contact any of
the sites linking to you.
The worse
case scenario is when you change domains, change directory structure and
files names (like when you migrate to a dynamic content delivery), but
you don't have any log data from the prior site to analyze, and you serve
a generic error 404 page.
If this
happens to you, remember...
The various
sites around the web that were linking to your old pages likely still are
linking to them
You can use
search engines, software like LinkSurvey, and your own logs to identify
where those old links are
Contact those
sites to request changes be made
