[thelist] 301 Redirect or...

[Pringle, Ron]

I've just switched over our municipal website from .html files to .asp,
including completely rebuilding the directory structure and much of the
content ( on an IIS 5 server).

In some places the content has changed dramatically and in other places, it
is taken from the old page, but with new sidebar content, etc.

We're talking about 500+ pages of content here.

Should I be creating 301 permanent redirects for main sections of content or
just let the old links die a peaceful death and wait for the search engines
to re-index?

I'm probably more concerned with people who have direct links to internal
pages, but I also don't know that I can create redirects for all of those
pages, or even know what they are.

Advice and suggestions appreciated.

Regards,
Ron