Switching to SEO Friendly URLS after 3 Years

[Suleman]

Hello,

I developed website 3 years ago but i didn't made the urls SEO friendly now i feel to change those url to html use htaccess. I have few confusions if i change those urls using htaccess to html it will effect my google ranking i need suggestions, but one interesting thing old url will work as well new ones which i converted using htaccess.

Thanks allot.

[tedster]

Yes, when you change the URL it definitely will affect the rankings for that content, at least for a period of time. Why do you feel the need to make this change after 3 years?

[g1smd]

If both URLs work and directly return content with 200 OK status, you are introducing a Duplicate Content problem.

If you introduce new URLs you should generally redirect requests for the old URLs to the new URLs.

[deadsea]

In the past year I have migrated about 3000 important urls on a million url site to very friendly urls.
Old: /103-product-listing-id89733.html
New: /category-phrase
When we do this we 301 redirect the old url to the new url and change all internal links on the site to point to the new url. We have seen no downside from this. Not even a temporary drop in search engine referral traffic to these pages. In our case, the pages with the url changes have few or no external links.

[Suleman]

Thanks for your suggestions. i appreciate it.

[tedster]

deadsea, thanks for that report - good to know. Have you (or anyone else) ever changed ALL the URLs on a site with no period of lost traffic?

[aakk9999]

I have, on two different sites. One about 15 months ago, approx 300 URLs changed (all were from important ranking pages). There was no content change nor anything - only change from dynamic to friendly URLs. I saw no drop in traffic nor ranking at all. Also, Google sorted it quite quickly. Site size at the time: around 2500 pages.

The second change was in October, a different site, ALL URLs changed but the site redesign + restructure was done at the same time, so perhaps it is difficult to be objective here. Google traffic doubled in the month following the change (however the site had some other SEO work done together with relaunch). Site size is about 4000 pages.

[tedster]

My last experience may have been with too many URLs and on several very competitive keywords. Toward the end of last year we changed all of 85,000 URLs and rankings bobbled for about 10 days.

That has been roughly the same story with previous URL changes too. Only when there were technical errors did the traffic problems last for weeks and weeks.

[g1smd]

There was no content change nor anything - only change from dynamic to friendly URLs.

That's the most important point. If the page content and design wasn't changed, it is easier for Google to trust the URL change.

[deadsea]

I've been burnt by url and domain name changes in the past. Based on negative experiences from 6+ years ago, I'm cautious.

I think that Google has done a lot of work to make these changes possible, so I'm optimistic that whole site url format changes can be done. I'm not going to be the one to try it.

[tedster]

If the page content and design wasn't changed, it is easier for Google to trust the URL change.

A solid point g1smd. I'd say a lot of the trouble probably is related to a quick trust re-evaluation.

I've been burnt by url and domain name changes in the past

Oh yeah - domain changes are a whole other country. Not this thread's topic, however.

[c41lum]

I changed my urls and got smashed so be careful.

[rowtc2]

I have changed 2 years ago URLs with 301 redirect and no traffic drop. I have submitted a sitemap with old URLs - the reason: if Google index new URL before see the redirect status on old URL, results temporarily duplicate pages.

Suleman, this change should help. But do not make keyword stuffing in URLs. And be sure old URLs returns 301 header status. Probably is good to not change anything else on site until new URLs are in index at site: command.