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Thanks for that, I definitely will make sure to address the internal links. But what about questions 1, 2, and 3. At this point, my main concern are the backlinks that I have accumulated over the past 2 years. Will these apply to the new URL's?

On 4/19/12 I began changing the link title tags in an effort to further optimize my website. I thought they were excessively long and it would be beneficial to make them more concise. On 4/26/12 my website traffic began to fall drastically and I'm not sure if it is from google's penguin update or from changing the link title tags.

I started looking into the sudden drop of traffic and realized that when I run the site explorer tool on all of the pages I changed, the URL is redirecting. It appears that the backlinks are not passing through to the new URL.

Before I Changed the Link Title Tag:

http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.beautystoponline.com%2FAndis-Professional-Hair-Clippers-s%2F102150.htm

**After I Changed the Link Title Tag: **

http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.beautystoponline.com%2FAndis-Clippers-s%2F102150.htm

So my questions are:

1. The above example shows that the old title tag (www.beautystoponline.com/Andis-Professional-Hair-Clippers-s/102150.htm) has 43 backlinks and the new one (www.beautystoponline.com/Andis-Professiona-Hair-Clippers-s/102150.htm) has 0. Will the links eventually be attributed to the new URL.
2. I understand that the user will still be directed to my website they click the any of the backlinks, but will the link juice pointing the old URL pass through the new one?
3. Would it be better, in the long run, to continue optimizing the link title tags.

Ben,

I appreciate your help and see that I was confusing 301 redirects with 404 errors. I was trying to ask that if I changed the title tag, would the link be directed to a 404 error. And, if that was the case, I do know how to setup the 301 redirects.

That said, I want to clarify just a few things with my initial questions. When a say "title tag" I am referring to the title in the URL itself and not the Meta Title. For example...  in my "user-friendly" CMS... the title tag field of the below category page is "Hair-Dryers".

http://www.beautystoponline.com/Hair-Dryers-s/234.htm

Now if I was to change the title tag "Hair Dryers" with "Blow Dryers"... I already can confirm that the "s/234.htm" will stay the same. But, let's say I have the above URL as a back link on someones blog. If I make this change will the link still work?

And, to take it a bit further... even if the link still works, will this have any impact on that specific category's ranking with Google?

Thanks so much for your input!!!

I recently began re-optimizing my title tags site wide. Could this cause 301 redirects and the loss of backlinks?

A while back we were schooled on "Link Silos" a reputable SEO source.... and one suggestion was to create links from our product pages (bottom of link silo), back up to it's higher category page. So for example...

Home > Tools > Hair Dryers > "Product"

On the subject product... we chose to link back to "Hair Dryers" and then "Andis" (that product's brand page.

You can see this at the below product page. We added the links below "Related Categories" in the product description.

http://www.beautystoponline.com/Andis-Colorwaves-Tourmaline-Hair-Dryer-Blue-Green-p/an1dry0295.htm

We are now thinking this may be just too much as there is already a "bread crumb" trail at the top of the product page. These are in essence links back up to higher categories.

Any input on these types of links would be appreciated.. Thanks!