Hi, I have several very good ranking (dynamic) pages in Google, for example: mysite.com/news.php?id=xxx Now I'd like to change mysite.com/news.php?id=xxx to mysite.com/this-is-the-newsubject.html to get keywords in my urls. I know how to do this, that's no problem at all, but I'm wondering what will happen to the ranking of that page? Will the increase or decrease my rankings? Do I have to 302 redirect mysite.com/news.php?id=xxx to mysite.com/this-is-the-newsubject.html ? Will the searchresults for mysite.com/news.php?id=xxx vanish and be replaced by mysite.com/this-is-the-newsubject.html ? Any possible penalties for duplicate content? I seriously doubting to do this. I don't want to lose my current rankings. Thanks!
You would want to 301(moved permanently) not 302(temporary) As a general rule, if its not broken don't fix it. I would need to look at a few things to see if its that beneficial. I have clients with craptacular zencart sites that rank and sell stuff just fine. hope that helps, Nigel
I agree w/ Nigel on ALL points. Keyword rich URLs are a minor ranking factor. You might see no increase in rankings if the only thing you do is change the URL to have the keywords in it. But if you do, you definitely need to 301 redirect, not 302. But I'd take Nigel's advice... The risk of changing it is greater than the potential reward you will get in the rankings...
This is why when starting any website it's important to have it programmed perfectly the first time. But having said that I recommend changing your url's completely, if your site is 2 years old for example, this is nothing when you consider your site will be around for many more years to come. Something to think about!
its surely increase your rank once redirect, and benefit is google easily identify from url itself what u want to convey
well actually since google has said that duplicated content is "ok" if you do your rewrite you wouldn't need the 301 redirect. the old pages will still have their ranking and your new ones will get crawled and move up and possibly back to the same place
there is no way to lose ranking if you set up a 301 redirect, that's what Matt Cutt said, just set the 301 and have your URLs redone, you will lose some SERP but I am sure you will regain it back and much more after you put your keywords in the URL
If you are contented with google ranking then don't change it. But if you are looking for traffic from other search engines then you surely have to alter to SEO friendly URLS.
Hmm, I guess I'll just leave it like it is now. Btw, it's 301 redirect indeed, I made a mistake Thanks for all replies!
I agree, it is always better to have it done right the first time. In the other hand, it is hard to predict updates that may be needed in the future. By making changes to the URL's you are taking a risk, but depending on how the performs at search engine after, it could be worth it. I do not think it is a good idea to make the changes to the URL's of your website that you are inquiring about. In my opinion: you may want to concider other options, and methods of SEO, that could help the improve the keyword performance for the keywords that are most important to your website.
Well my website is already online for 3+ years. When I created the site, I used a CMS which didn't have SEO abilities. Also I didn't have much SEO knowledge. Since 2008 I'm optimizing my website by using several SEO techniques and custom coding. Now I came with the idea of creating SEO url's, maybe a bit too late. I've learned my lesson. When I'll create a new website, I'll immediately start with SEO.
and this is what Matt Cutt recommend in his videos do as you want, but on the long run your site will gain more popularity
I had a site with a URL like mydomain.com/about.htm with a PR2. The traffic to that URL was Ok but i took the risk, changed the URL to include one of my keywords- mydomain.com/keyword-about.htm and it eventually worked wonders. It took about two moths to get ranked in google but in the long run, the traffic gained was worthwhile. So go for it!
And what if I do it this way: Change all the urls to mydomain.com/page-title-some-keyword.htm but also leave the dynamic pages mydomain.com/page.php?id=xxx work? This way searchengines will spider the new urls, but the old urls will still be in the index and will still work if someone visits it by coincidence. Or will the be penalised for duplicate content or something?