renaming pages- effect on ranking

Hi,

I am thinking of renaming my pages from .htm to .php in order to use scripting for my site menu.

Will this change wreck my pages search engine rankings?

Darren.

 

I would think so... you are really creating a new page, so it needs to get indexed and ranked again.

Doing a 301 redirect might help a bit, but if you have good rankings I wouldn't risk it

 

You can use mo-rewrite to rewrite the urls back to .htm

 

Now that I read your post again... why don't you just parse php? why would you need to change the extension of the pages?

 

yes its a problem,

fryman, thats a good idea for php.

jalika

 

Doing a 301 redirect is best solution...

 

it will not affect on ranking

 

it will definitely change the SERP. you shall use 301 redirect as our member has suggested. Otherwise, google should be able to find you as soon as you change the page.

 

My suggestion is if you have good rank.Wouldn't take risk.

 

I created a thread with a question if it's a good idea to re-name & got some useful responses, if you want to take a look http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=237546