Hi,
I am doing a redesign on a slightly tired website and want to change all the URLs from say categories.php?cat_id=1 to categories/1/ to cover all the search engines.
If I use 404 redirects both to manage this and to redirect the old links to the equivalent page in the new system, this may amount to about 2000+ redirects.
Some guidance on whether I will be penalised for this in terms of search ranking and whether this would only be short terms until all the new URLs in the sitemap are indexed would be appreciated. Alternatively, are there any suggestions for a better approach.
Many thanks in advance
Use 301 redirects.
You will lose nothing
That’s a great thing to do, but it’s great because it helps people, not because it helps search engines.
If I use 404 redirects both to manage this and to redirect the old links to the equivalent page in the new system, this may amount to about 2000+ redirects.
(I think you mean ‘301 redirects’…)
Rather than writing out each redirect individually, if they conform to a regular pattern (or set of patterns), you can use mod_rewrite to map the old URLs to the new ones, this sets up 301 redirects for all URLs matching the pattern(s).
Some guidance on whether I will be penalised for this in terms of search ranking and whether this would only be short terms until all the new URLs in the sitemap are indexed would be appreciated. Alternatively, are there any suggestions for a better approach.
If you use 301 redirects (whether individually set or with mod_rewrite), you will not be penalised at all - search engines recognise that sites may reorganise their content, and by setting up the redirects properly, you are telling them to update their indexes and replace the old pages with the new ones. And because you have put the right redirects on, people will get taken to the right page even before their indexes have been updated.
Thanks guys - apologies for getting my 404s and 301s mixed up. Appreciate the advice and good to know there’s no penalty for this.