I have a question for the SE/Google experts out there. I recently turned my static html files (about 1,000) into php files via Wordpress, and I used permanent re-directs (via htaccess) to tell the SE's the new location of the files. Question: Is leaving all those re-directs (remember, I have tons of them in the htacess file) a potential problem? All the search engines, including Google, have all listed the new locations of the files, but I'm still leaving the re-directs for those incoming links that were in place long before I made the move. Any thoughts on this? Is there any danger to leaving the re-directs months, years afterwards in the form of SE penalties, etc?
You need to keep redirects as long as there are links still pointing to the old URLs. Otherwise visitors and search engines will not be able to find information that the links point to (and Google will not pass pagerank). Having permanent (301) redirects is normal and is recommended by Google, not penalized. Also, the redirect is by nature permanent, so it should stay in place permanently (at least as long as links to old URLs still exists and the content that the links pointed to still exists on the site).