To redirect or not ...

[jmarshall]

Hi,

I recently just launched a new site which is all in flash ... the prior version was HTML.

I am wondering if it is better to just delete the old HTML pages off of the server (because they still show up in Google searches) or should I put redirects on all the pages to the home page. I don't want to do anything that will mess with google (I had read in some cases redirecting leads to banning) ... maybe not in this case? I am just not too familiar with the best practice to handle this change.

Thanks so much!

[scragar]

Well you want to keep the old versions, even if it's just for the people who can't access flash(blind springs to mind, with normal text screen readers will work as does text browsers, people using computers without flash installed without the perms to install it etc...), at least then your not ignoring them(and of course google can't index flash files right, so just flash will cripple your page ranking).

I don't know enough to comment on the best thing to do here though.

[MyWebsiteAdvise]

Hi,

Read this article : A modern approach to Flash SEO
(http://blog.deconcept.com/2006/03/13/modern-approach-flash-seo/)

Probably, you have some search engines PR and you shouldn't give it up.
If you are going to change your pages as described in this article, you can create 301 redirect from old pages to new ones.

[bizcoaching]

You can delete the page and put a landing page on it saying that, that page is not available and suggest them another page to look for. I would suggest you read that link above about SEO dealing with flash. :)

[Kimberlh]

I have done a lot of moving web page in the last few years from html to content mangers because many of my web site are html due to the fact when I started html and javascript was all their was.

I do redirects for six months on popular pages then delete them BUT I have found the good custom error pages are a good idea. Then at least if they hit the wrong or deleted url they get a nice page telling them what has happened and how to get the sites main page.

If you want to use error pages, you need:

(Note: I made one page and just named them all these files)

400 Bad File Request - bad_request.html

401 Unauthorized - unauthorized.html

403 Forbidden/Access denied - forbidden.html

404 Not Found - not_found.html

405 Method Not Allowed - method_not_allowed.html

406 Not Acceptable - not_acceptable.html

407 Proxy Authentication Required - proxy_authentication_required.html

412 Precondition Failed - precondition_failed.html

414 Request-URI Too Long - request-uri_too_long.html

415 Unsupported Media Type - unsupported_media_type.html

500 Internal Server Error - internal_server_error.html

501 Not Implemented - not_implemented.html

Hope that helps
Kimberly

[MyWebsiteAdvise]

Another method is .htaccess file. You can create custom redirect rules ...

* Linux web hosting only

[dtm32236]

Well you want to keep the old versions, even if it's just for the people who can't access flash(blind springs to mind, with normal text screen readers will work as does text browsers, people using computers without flash installed without the perms to install it etc...), at least then your not ignoring them(and of course google can't index flash files right, so just flash will cripple your page ranking).

I don't know enough to comment on the best thing to do here though.

I agree with scragar.

I would leave the HTML pages as an option for the user (for accessibility reasons, as noted above).

BUT, if you're going to get rid of them, DEFINITELY use 301 redirects. That way, you preserve your PR/SERP for those pages. Otherwise you'll just lose all the backlinks and SEO efforts you've built up for those pages.

[devmaster]

whoa great tips for seo using a flash site.
I have a question, how can we SEO Flash content?

[dtm32236]

Until recently, Google couldn't read Flash sites. But within the last couple months, they announced that they can now crawl these sites and index them appropriately. I'm sure that it's not as effective as with HTML/CSS sites, but it's definitely good news for anyone with a Flash site.

As far as optimizing them, I'm not really sure - I just wanted to share that bit of information.