Forum Moderators: coopster
I'm currently running a myPHPnuke based site and in the process of upgrading it to CPG-nuke, mainly due to the increased security. Probably the most important page of the existing site is the enquiry form, through which the majority of our business is received. For the sake of argument let's say the URL of this form is something like:
www.example.com/enquiry-form.php
This URL has been used and promoted for some years now and is found everywhere from organic search engine results to PPC campaigns to letterheads and business cards...in other words changing it to something else would be non-trivial.
Having installed CPG-nuke in a test directory I see that the URL I get when using the built in enquiry form is something like this:
www.example.com/index.php?name=EnquiryForm
This is due to the modular system used by CPG-nuke which allows increased functionality while maintaining a good level of security (that's my understanding at any rate!)
Anyway, here's my question:
Assuming that I want to use the built in enquiry form (i.e. www.example.com/index.php?name=EnquiryForm) can I continue to use the existing URL (i.e. www.example.com/enquiry-form.php) and redirect it without negatively impacting my search engine ranking for this page? In fact there are a number of other current URLs with similarly descriptive names (e.g. red-widgets.php, blue-widgets.php, etc.) which I'd also like to keep due to their keyword content.
In a nutshell I want to continue using (i.e. promoting) my existing page names but redirect the user visiting these pages to the relevant URL (as required by CPG-nuke) without affecting my current and future search engine rankings. Am I right in thinking that what I *don't* want is a permanent 301 redirect as the spider will then index a less search engine friendly URL? If I set up a temporary redirect could that be flagged as potentially suspicious and harm my current rankings? Might I need to use mod_rewrite?
As always, many thanks in advance to anyone who can shed some light on the above!
Kind regards,
Mac
[edited by: pageoneresults at 1:44 pm (utc) on Aug. 4, 2004]
[edit reason] Examplified URI References [/edit]
So if the URIs given are pretty much what you'll have, do a permanent redirect and let the engines get the proper address in their indexes.
That said, to make it easier on *users*, I would probably do some URL rewriting, which is basically transparent as far as SEs are concerned (though JDMorgan is trying to teach me a thing or two about this in the Apache forum).
So I would probably use rewriting to rewrite this
www.example.com/enquiry-form/
to this
www.example.com/index.php?name=EnquiryForm
So the user types in the former and goes to the latter.
The directives below will likely NOT work, because I'm sleepy and even on my best days have to experiment with the rewrite rules to get them right. JD and others in the Apache forum do this in their sleep, but to give a rough idea... In your .htaccess
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^(.*)enquiry-form(.*)$ $1index.php?name=EnquiryForm$2 [L]
If I understand you correctly what we're saying is that I could *either* use a 301 redirect or mod_rewrite (presumably it makes no sense to talk about using both).
Just out of curiosity, if Google, for example, were to spider a page (e.g. enquiry-form.php) where I was using the rewrite rules to direct visitors to the "real" (and slightly more complicated) URL which version of the URL is added to the search engine index? The former, "user friendly" version or the latter?
Thanks again for your help!
Cheers,
Mac
Personally, in your situation I would rewrite but not redirect, but it all depends on how you want to set things up.
Cheers,
Mac
