Permanent 301 redirects vs canonical urls?
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Im moving a website that was .php to wordpress with a few static HTML pages. Which is better use permanent 301 redirects and delte the old pages, leave the old pages and use canonical urls and 301 redirects or something else?
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As Ryan said, do 301's. You don't want to have the old versions up and canonical them if you don't have to.
Imagine the confusing surfers that land on something because of an old link, and then click around and end up on the new version.
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Generally speaking, you want to 301 all the old pages to their new pages. 301 redirects are always preferred over canonicals.
I would also recommend using friendly URLs that do not end with .html or any other extension that identifies the coding technology used. This method makes migrating platforms less work and more user friendly.
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Rand suggests the Cross-Domain Rel Canonical in his WBF vid last May: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/cross-domain-canonical-the-new-301-whiteboard-friday. Go to 4:00 into the vid and I think that is more relevant to your situation. I think the other questions are: Are these old pages ranking well for particular keywords? Do any of these pages still get recent traffic? Do any of these pages have any strong links to them? Those are the ones you want to bring with you.
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