• SEOmoz, Thursday, March 29, 2012 2:05 PM

Change a word in a headline in an article and it slightly alters the URL. Typically the search engine will redirect to the new URL, but Everett Sizemore tells us a lot of things can go wrong when changing most URLs on a Web site that supports thousands or millions of pages. Sizemore's story chronicles how FreeShipping.org relaunched with a new design and updated site architecture. He tells us that while the company had expected some lag time and temporary loss in ranking, it became much worse quickly. Traffic declined dramatically immediately after the relaunch, and a week later it was still falling. The detailed post provides six takeaways from his experience with uncrawled 301s.

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