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I have a friend who had around 2000 visitors per day to his website before webdesigner with no SEO knowledge changed all his urls. Ive used the wayback machine and google analytics to determine the old urls and I've done a 301 redirect and checked that it redirects properly.

My question is how long does it take before Google notices the redirects and passes link juice? And will those long lost backlinks who where pointing to 404 pages count in Google Webmaster Tools, I mean will I see a higher number of backlinks?

And last question, will I get a higher PageRank?

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My question is how long does it take before google notices the redirects and passes link juice?

It varies from site-to-site. Stack Overflow will see virtually immediate effects while "smaller" sites could have to wait weeks for all of their pages to be found and updated in their index. If this site gets 2,000 visitors a day, they probably have plenty of quality backlinks and probably would see results sooner rather then later.

and will those long lost backlinks who where pointing to 404 pages count in google webmaster tools, I mean will I see a higher number of backlinks?

Once those redirects are found, yes.

And last question, will I get a higher page-rank?

Maybe. Maybe not. A few links may not make a difference in your page's rankings. There are a lot of factors to be considered when determining the rank of a page and we don't know enough of them to say what will happen. But more links, especially if they're on-topic, are a good thing and this can only help.

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Thank you John, this was very helpful. – user27594 Apr 30 at 11:50
It's also worth mentioning that if you lost backlinks though deletion of pages your end, and then you setup a redirect to catch these and redirect them to the home page then this can result in negative SEO. So be careful if your trying to retain juice for pages that no longer exist and you no longer have relevant pages for the redirect. Sometimes its best just to leave it as 404, or 410. Nice Answer John. – bybe♦ Apr 30 at 13:11
When I mean negative SEO its normally dilution of the home page from the page that is being redirected. Or at least is what is believed, rule of thumb most things are unconfirmed. – bybe♦ Apr 30 at 13:28

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