Change of website from .asp to .aspx

[raj1094]

Dear Webmasters,

I am changing my website from xyz.asp to xyz.aspx,
1) what will be the effect in SERP for my keywords?
2) To retain my keywords ranking what steps I have to take,

Suggest Me regarding this.

Thanks in Advance.

[tedster]

Changing all your URLs (and a new .aspx extension will be a new URL) is, as you may know from reading many threads here, full of potential trouble.

See [webmasterworld.com...] for two different ways to stay with the same file extension and still use ASP.NET functionality.

It's much better to keep your existing URLs.

[AnkitMaheshwari]

I am changing my website from xyz.asp to xyz.aspx

I would recommend to avoid it (if manageable) if your site is getting good traffic from Search engines.

1) what will be the effect in SERP for my keywords?

The rankings/traffic may dip for 1 week to upto 1-2 months, provided you have taken care of all other aspects like redirection.

2) To retain my keywords ranking what steps I have to take,

Page level 301 redirection from respective old pages to the new pages and keep the redirects from atleast 4-6 months.
Recommendation: Do not go in for major design/content changes along with redirection. Do the content changes once new pages start to come in SERP's

[tedster]

In the thread I linked to, mrMister offers what I consider to be excellent advice:

None of your URLs should change, not even with a redirect.

You can do one of two things

Use URL rewriting (eg. ISAPI_Rewrite) to rewrite your .asp urls to the new .aspx versions.

eg.. your URL is actually:

http://www.example.com/widgets/blue.asp

but behind the scenes, the file that is being loaded is

c:\inetpub\wwwroot\widgets\blue.aspx

Or, in IIS simply change it so that all .asp files are handled by the ASP.Net dll and instead of giving your .Net files a .aspx extension, give them a .asp extension (they'll still be processed as ASP.Net files, just like if you'd named them .aspx)

[ergophobe]

I was about to say the same thing as Ted.

I would add though that if you *have* to change the URLs for some absolutely compelling reason, absolutely do not change to .aspx. Then you'll be faced with the same problem next time you change technologies.

Instead, learn the lesson from this problem and change them to extensionless URLs

http://www.example.com/widgets/blue/

So...

1. Rewrite (not redirect) if you can as Ted said. Check your headers. You should return a 200 on the original URL and the URL in the browser address bar should not change. If it redirects the user to a .aspx page, fix it. If you're hiring it out, make sure that requirement is in the spec.

2. If you can't do that, consider firing your developers and sysadmins unless they have a really good reason. If they do have a good reason, make sure they use extensionless URLs on the new site.

3. If they can't do #1 or #2, they absolutely need to be replaced by competent help, sent for remedial training or get some temp help from a consultant who knows how to do it.

BTW, just before my wife took her current job, they rolled out a site update. The new developers did the exact same thing (actually .cfm to .aspx). When she took over and asked why in the world they would do that, they literally didn't know there was an alternative.

Result: when she took over and started looking at rankings and running the analytics, guess what their most popular page was after the home page? Guess what page came up second in a site: search?

Yep, their 404 page.

[dstiles]

It's possible to redefine the ASP extension or add extra ones in IIS on a site-by-site basis. Talk to your hosting company.

[raj1094]

Thanks for the response