we have big vbulletin forum we use Basic Friendly URLs showthread.php?1234-Thread-Title I think to switch to Mod Rewrite Friendly URLs threads/1234-Thread-Title when I swich to Mod Rewrite Will I lose pages indexing ? our forum is online since 2005 Indexing /archiving in Google is very good but I want best way to improve our SERP in Google also what is the best for google? Advanced Friendly URLs: showthread.php/1234-Thread-Title or Mod Rewrite Friendly URLs: threads/1234-Thread-Title I want your suggestion , what can I do to improve SERP ?
Yes, you will lose page indexing. Because the URL will change. Unless you can redirect the old URL to the new one with a 301 redirect? Also, if presently your URL features keywords in it, then I think you shouldn't go about changing it at all.
Your best bet to maintain your rankings and indexed pages is to 301 redirect all of your old URLs to the new URLs.
I really do not know if Vb 4 will auto redirect. You will have to check their site to find out what it can do, but my guess is out of the box it will not auto redirect, but I could be wrong.
How do you do a 301 redirect of old links to new links? I definitely lost a lot of juice when I switched from Basic Friendly URLs to Mod Rewrite URLs.