If I'm updating a URL and 301 redirecting the old URL to the new URL, Google recommends I remove the old URL from our XML sitemap and add the new URL. That makes sense. However, can anyone speak to how Google transfers the ranking value (link value) from the old URL to the new URL?

My suspicion is this happens outside the sitemap. If Google already has the old URL indexed, the next time it crawls that URL, Googlebot discovers the 301 redirect and that starts the process of URL value transfer.

I guess my question revolves around whether removing the old URL (or the timing of the removal) from the sitemap can impact Googlebot's transfer of the old URL value to the new URL.

For the benefit of others, I'm going to walk through how I would investigate this situation...

1. Head over to OSE and pull a backlink report to see if the link shows up (it doesn't)
2. Check links on Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Tools

If the BBB link cannot be identified through those steps, move on to the following:

1. Verify the BBB page is indexed by searching the URL (it is indexed)
2. Verify the redirect is truly a 301 by visiting a header checking tool and entering URL. (yes, it is a 301 redirect)
3. Visit BBB and verify the following: a) the page is not being blocked from bots (it isn't) b) the link is followed (it is) c) the link can be crawled by bots (it can)
4. Visit the BBB robots.txt file to verify the page isn't blocked from bots (it isn't)

At this point, it's tough to determine exactly what is going on. I suppose I would consider building some links into said BBB page to 'assist' the bots in finding the page and capturing the link. Might be a good time to apply the ideas Pavel blogged about regarding SEO value from Q&A sites.

Best of luck!

Rather than trying to imagine what a good strategy is in this situation, why not look at someone in a similar situation. Unless I am misunderstanding your site structure, it sounds like you at least have a home page and a blog - much like SEOmoz. Let's take a look at how SEOmoz handles this situation.

All Pages

• Persistent site search allowing users to find any SEOmoz content at any point in time during a visit

Home Page

• Clearly calls out latest posts to SEO Blog and YOUmoz Blog

SEO Blog & YOUmoz Blog Home Pages

• Shows latest posts and lets user view by 5, 10, 15, 25, or 50 posts
• View most popular posts
• View posts by author
• View posts by category
• Pagination at bottom of page lets visitors move easily to older blog posts

Post Pages

• View most popular posts
• View posts by author
• View posts by category
• View related Q&A

One thing to keep in mind here is the amount of work required to manage a Twitter channel well. To keep a single channel fresh takes a lot of time. Trying to keep seven channels fresh (the six characters + the channel for the series) is going to be a ton of work. The last thing you want is for your social media channels to reflect poorly on the series. Social media channels that go dormant due to lack of resources never reflect well on a brand.

That being said, would it make more sense to roll all the characters under the nakedinfishbowl account?

If you choose to move forward with Twitter accounts for every character, I think I would opt for [CHARACTER NAME]_Fishbowl or [CHARACTER NAME]Fishbowl (Bonnie_Fishbowl or BonnieFishbowl, for example). Here is my reasoning:

1. NIAF is already owned and somewhat branded. You probably don't want people appending @NIAF to posts about your series.
2. [CHARACTER NAME]_Fishbowl or [CHARACTER NAME]Fishbowl is easy to remember.

Good luck! This is a tricky one...

David's response is accurate. However, you can always rewrite the .aspx URL on the server and serve .html (or whatever). The server will see .aspx, but the visitor will see .html.

Working with ASP

I work strictly with PHP on Linux servers so I'm going to point you to a site that offers a tutorial I can't really vouch for. Head here for a tutorial detailing how to set up .asp to .html rewrites.

Working with PHP

On a Linux box, you can insert the following code into your .htaccess file to set up URL rewriting. I know the question wasn't about PHP and Linux. I'm just including this for others who might find it useful.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^(.*).html$ $1.php [L]

If you're interested in further information, here is a resource to help you learn more about working with .htaccess files.