Hello all,

I thought I knew what I was doing, but I dont' know nothing! I think I need to stick to SEO and other easy stuff.

I have a client who comes to me and says "I want you to take my site, get rid of all the flash and fancy stuff, gut it to the bone and throw away the bones, and convert all my pages to simple html".

I said no problem. Then I looked at his site.

I don't know the idiot that designed his site, but I'd like to meet him in a dark alley.

About 20 of the pages end in .shmt
Another 25 pages end in: .php
Another 5 or 10 pages end in: .xml
about 15 end in: html
about 35 pages have java script installed that to say the least doesn't work... the flash slows the page to a snail's pace...
well you get the message or maybe I should say the mess.

Here's my problem. I don't want to mess with this guy's page rank in Google by doing re-directs to new pages that I design ending in .html or .htm and I sure don't want his surfers getting 404 errors since he already has about 80 pages indexed, so how do I redo his whole site of 80 pages without messing with his page extentions? (he's also switching to my hosting company so he'll be on a new server) I really don't want him having a "alphabet soup" site.

Thanks for helping the new kid on the block.

Paul

If your client wants bare bone html, then it's relatively simple...

1) get firefox
2) get the inline w3c validation extension [ http://users.skynet.be/mgueury/mozilla/ ]
3) Go on each page, view sources, click "clean up the page", and copy/paste the result in a new file
4) strip any flash content
5) replace the original pages with the new one.

Take care of the .xml though, as they can be real XML files, with an XSL style sheet which the browser apply to the datas to create HTML on the fly.

But as for the PR, although I would not care for it, I don't know if the page extension is taken in account.

Don't worry about the pages not existing that have been indexed, the search engines will fix that and his PR will not change. If anything, clean code and less clutter will help not hinder.

As for the various pages, then they will all be doing different things. Or at least should be. You need to actually look through them and see what needs keeping and what to ignore. Then, when you have all that you believe you need, build it bottom, up.

If you use 301 redirects then you won't lost the PR. You will at first till Google sorts things out, but eventually they'll sort it out and the PR and any link benefit flowing into the pages will be transferred to the new pages.

If you don't have to change the extension or file name then don't change it just for the sake of changing it, but don't worry about creating new URLs for the pages.

As long as you redirect there won't be any 404s. If one of the old pages ranks well it probably still will at first and someone clicking will be redirected to the new page. In time the PR will get transferred to the new URLs as long as use you use 301 or permanent redirects.