Preserving search engine footprint

[LIU]

Hi again,

I have an existing WP website that I have had for several years. I have created a new website in Xara. I don't want obliterate my existing footprint but I do want to replace the old website with the new one.

My question is what do I use for a page title?

If I look at my existing site I don't know how to find the existing page title so I can name the new one appropriately. My new site is also a bit smaller than the old one so I don't know what to do with some of the existing pages that may still show up on a search engine.

www.lapitup.biz

I hope this makes sense.

Thanks for the help

Diana

[gwpriester]

Use the same meta data from your current site for the new site.

[LIU]

I am not web savvy I don't know how to find this or what it means?

"Use the same meta data from your current site"

[LIU]

So I found this site while doing a search but I don't really understand how to use it in Xara

[Egg Bramhill]

These are required for Search Engine Optimisation.

You place them in the website properties window

The second image shows how the title would appear in Google.

[LIU]

OK thanks what do I put for the page title? I don't know if I need to label it HTML or not since the original page title is just lapitup.biz?

[Egg Bramhill]

The page title in the case above could be something like "Lap It Up, Durham's dog center."

Page Description might be "Looking for somewhere to train your dog to play and swim in Durham NC?"

The keywords (sometimes called meta tags) should contain comma seperated words or phrases that relate to the content of your site or page so " dog, play, swim, teach your dog to swim, Durham, NC," etc.

Basically what your doing is targeting your Title, Page Description & Keywords to assist search engines like Google to understand what your sites about and to allow it to display those results in their search results. The page content is the most important thing when it comes to SEO, including the relevance of H1, H2 type headers. Try thinking what a prospective visitor would type into a SE's Find box.

The Page title is what appears in the tab of the browser, so for example this TG tab shows "Preserving search engine footprint" although only "Preserving .." is shown, the search engines still take note of the remainder. Your current sites Title is <title>Lap It Up - Dog Swim, Learn and Play Park in Durham NC</title>

Your current sites description is:
<!-- All in One SEO Pack 2.0.3.1 by Michael Torbert of Semper Fi Web Design[356,378] -->
<meta name="description" content="Lap It Up is a unique facility offering a place for your dog to swim, learn and play in Durham NC." />

<meta name="keywords" content="dog swim park, dog play park" />

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.lapitup.biz/" />
<!-- /all in one seo pack -->

So you appear to have used an SEO software along the way. The "canonical" reference tells SE's your prefered url to that page/site.

Your current Keywords are:

<meta name="keywords" content="dog swim park, dog play park" />

I'd suggest adding Durham, North Carolina, although the keywords are not as important to SE's as they used to be.

Here's how your current site displays in Google. You can clearly see the Title & Description in the listings:

[LIU]

Thank you for all of the help, a few more clarifications and I should be fine.

In the same article it says to keep the file names intact and the extensions. I thought that was the same as the page name but I guess I am wrong on that one.
Is the file name where I would change htm to html? Where do I find my current file names? I have a Godaddy hosted account and I hired a web developer before who created and uploaded my site.

Diana

[slavelle]

One thing that we do when moving a site to a different platform is create a bunch of 301 Redirects in the .htaccess file. This is neither obvious nor automatic, but what it does is tell the website visitor when they click a Google link to forward to the appropriate new page.

So if you used to have your product info at this URL:
www.mycompany.com/product-info

you would maybe create a redirect that went to www.mycompany.com/our-products

The 301 redirect also tells Google that the next time it scans your site, these are permanent redirections so Google should update the links it has in the index to the new ones. Once that happens in full, the 301 redirects essentially never get used again.

A basic redirect might look like this, which would be one of many lines in the .htaccess file, assuming that your host supports them and you are using Apache:
Redirect 301 /retiredpage.html http://www.xyz.com/newpage.html

I hope this helps to answer the question.

[LIU]

It does and I think I need some professional help so I don't screw it up. Does anyone know how I can find someone who works with Xara that can help publish my site and preserve the footprint?