Changing page's URL - effects on SERPS

[lee_sufc]

I have 2 pages on my site which have "%20" between each word in the page name. I want to create new pages using "-" between each word as this looks much tidier and is easier to remember.

2 questions: firstly, how can i do this, and secondly, what will happen to the page's SERPS and PR?

Thanks in advance!

[tedster]

Well, what you need to do technically is create a new url with the old url's content. You may think of it as "the same page" but there is no technical definition of "page" - search engines index content and urls.

When you create a new url with the same content, you need to be sure that links on your site to the old url all get changed. If the old version is not an "important" url for you, you could just remove it from the server. If it is an important url, you would create a 301 Permanent redirect for requests that ask for the old version, sending them to the new version.

With regards to the SERPs, there's likely to be a bump in the road for those two urls that you change - if your pages get frequent spidering, Google may adapt very quickly - but plan for a monthb or two of craziness.

Because you're only changing two urls, it won't create as much rankings trouble as changing the entire url structure of your site - but the principles are still the same. There's are several threads discussing url changes in our
Hot Topics section [webmasterworld.com], which is always pinned to the top of this forum's index page.

[edited by: tedster at 12:42 am (utc) on Nov. 2, 2007]

[g1smd]

The 301 redirects from old to new are important to keep spiders on track.

They should speed up the transition for which URLs are indexed by search engines.

The redirects need to be left active almost indefinitely.

The old URLs may very well show up as Supplemental Results in Google for up to a year. That is not a problem.