My website is being changed into a dynamic site (as I constantly need to update it). Its been online for a year already. What happens to any links that are already in other ppls web sites (pointing to a specific page, not the homepage), if the url will now be different? Will I lose any benefit I may have received? In what other ways will I be penalized in the short term? Is there anything that I can do for the search engines to make the transition easier? If it helps the site will be using php. thanks in advance.
use 301 redirects to move users from old urls to the new pages of the same subject. A 301 redirect is a 'resource as moved to this address' code, so it will also tell the search engines that that your page has moved. 301 redirects can be done in a number of ways. mod_rewrite in an htaccess file is probably the easiest. Search this forum for Nintendos excellent post on using mod_rewite, and ask your web designerd why they have not advised / accounted for this.
Also this would be a good time to think about all your new urls and make sure they are well optimised to include keywords and have a logical structure and name.
Thanks for the advice, Dave...not sure what you mean about the URLs...are you suggesting a mod edit for the URL's? (I read a little about it yesterday)..if so can anyone point me in the right direction to learn how to do that?
Make sure to do a sitemap so the Yahoo and Googel know how to crawl the site properly. No follow links that go to things like RSS feeds. Those two things will make it so that your site is spidered correctly. There are tons of sitemap tools in the Google sitemap resources. Many are created specifically for one program or the other.