Changing dynamic URLs to SEO friendly - impact on indexed pages?

Hiyall,

I've had my site up for some six months now and it's finally starting to get some quality visits from google through the indexed pages.

After going through the forums here I'm contemplating changing my site to use more SEO friendly URLs. The thing I'm worried about is my current SERP rankings, what will happen to them if I change the URLs throughout the site and submit a new sitemap?

Will all my old URLs get junked when googlebot next comes visiting and I have to wait another six months for the google traffic to build up?

If that's the case, I think I'm better off keeping my current dynamic URLs than changing them...

What are your experiences with a situation like this?

 

The best thing you can do (unfortunately) is 301 redirect every single page from the old dynamic URL site to the new SEO friendly site. I do think it is worth your while. Nothing kills your rankings worse than a dynamic site that uses the same uniform title, keywords and descriptions across hundreds of pages. Dynamic URLs can sometimes be impossible to optimize for the web, unless you have a lot of significant backlinks to all of the individual pages. I have a site with dynamic URLs, and none of them even show up in searches or get direct visits. Only the category pages they're contained in get them.

 

You will see a change in your organic traffic, once you redirect your pages it takes time before all the weight is passed on to the new URL, it's temporary but always happens. You would need to 301 redirect all your dynamic URLs to the new static URLs. Google can and does index dynamic URLs, you get setup template variables within your backend to set meta tags\titles\etc for each dynamically created web page.

 

A client of mine has a 4000-page site where their dynamic URLs I changed to SEF a couple of years ago. The client is now asking that the majority of those URLs are changed again - just small adjustments here and there, but it would affect around 3500+ of their URLs.

I'm concerned about the sheer number of URLs that they want changed and I've advised against this, especially seeing as I reckon there's the strong possibility that they could drop the majority of their good results out of the SERPs in one go!

What are other people's thoughts/experiences on this matter?