10 replies to this topic

[xdrone]

i'm switching a site from .asp to .php.

i've done this before and it seems google was slow to assign a new PR to the changed site.

is this something that should really be avoided?

i guess i can just name the pages ".asp" and use htaccess to run them as php, but i'd rather not?

anyone have experience with this situation?

[projectphp]

If you are going to change, you are going to change. You just have to cop any issues that arise, if you want to change the filenames.

[organicseo]

if you do a 301 redirect from all your old pages to your new pages, then search engine bots can understand them and continue to rank your page. dont care about PR, it will automatically get assigned during the next google pr update; however, make sure that your rankings are stable after the change.

[khalidh]

We switched from java to php with no affect on our ranking. As long as you keep your urls seo friendly and the pages are accessible, I do not think there will be major affect on your ranking.

Khalid

[JohnMu]

There's a very timely piece called Cool URIs don't change:

There is a crazy notion that pages produced by scripts have to be located in a "cgibin" or "cgi" area. This is exposing the mechanism of how you run your server. You change the mechanism (even keeping the content the same ) and whoops - all your URIs change.

It doesn't explicitly mention SEO or even redirects, but he's right: cool URLs don't change. I imagine the guy knows what he's talking about - didn't he invent something ... ?

Maybe, with this transition away from ASP, you can work on getting the URLs platform independent? Instead of http://domain.com/folder/file.asp you could just use http://domain.com/folder/file/ (and use the default file handler, if you don't want to use extensionless files).

John

Added: I run into the same problem on my sites as well - but I'm getting better at it. Sigh. It's just too easy to do it for a short term benefit...

[hagrin]

I have a somewhat related question (btw, hello everyone!) -

With both Apache + .htaccess and IIS + Application Extensions would allow you to change the page extension to anything you want. Does the page extension play any roll in rankings?

The example I can think of off the top of my head is Ars Technica ( http://www.arstechnica.com ) whose index page is actually index.ars and not any real file extension type. If you have a really short keyword, would it be worth your time to take that keyword and make that the file extension for all your pages?

[JohnMu]

The extension probably plays the same role in the URL as any other element in the URL. It often makes sense to include a keyword in the URL, but it is not the most vital element and it does not need to be overdone (eg including a keyword in each and every URL of a site -- for example as the default file extension). http://mortgages4u.c...tgages.mortgage ? I don't think that a URL like that would invoke trust in a user who sees it listed in the search results.

John

[directom]

I've had problems just getting the html files on a msn platform to redirect to the new asp pages. Typically we do our work in php with mysql, but had to deal with server restrictions for this particular client. I can't get the redirects to actually work no matter what I've tried. Does anybody have any suggestions? Please let me know what information you'd need. Thank you very much in advance.

[JohnMu]

One thing you can do (it depends a bit on your server configuration) is to set up directories with the names of the older HTML files, and then place a script as the default file that does the actual redirect.

Example:

Old: /folder/page.htm
New: /folder/page.htm/default.asp

When a client accesses "/folder/page.htm" the server will issue a redirect to the version with the trailing slash (it would be a good idea to check to make sure that your server does a 301 redirect for that), which will then access the script in that folder. Within that script you could set up a normal 301 redirect to the actual new page. You can use that trick for all sorts of files that need to be redirected (if you do not have access to .htaccess or use a non-Apache server).

Hope it helps!
John

[Himanshu]

Thanks a ton JohnMu,
I was trying to redirect some of my pages for a long time and nothing was working. Just created directory as you suggested and finally achieved the goal.

Regards
Himanshu

[directom]

JohnMu - I missed your last post somehow and didn't see until today. Thank you for your help!!!