So, I redid my entire website so the links are entirely different now and I do not want to be penalized by google since google will have trouble finding the old indexed links.
How do I go about properly releasing the new site since it has new SEF links? Is there a way to “resubmit” a site to google, with the new sitemap structure of the site?
Ryan
[font=calibri]Fifteen years on, and we still need to remind people that Cool URIs don’t change.
When you reorganise your website, you should always clean up the old URLs, and make sure that (if possible) they are redirected to the most appropriate page in the new structure. It may not be an exact match, but whatever is closest. If there is no page that makes a suitable replacement, then ideally you should redirect to a special page that explains that content is no longer available and allows people to navigate to other key areas of the website.
Putting a redirect on all the old URLs that no longer work means that (i) search engines will update their indexes to the new structure, and will be able to keep the links and rankings that you had before, rather than starting from scratch, and (ii) anyone following an out of date link will still end up in the right place rather than being left floundering with no indication of where to go.[/font]