: I am changing my file extensions in URLs, how to keep my good SEO results? We have a website with good SEO results. For design reasons I have to update the design and I have to change file

@Connie744

You can use one of these solutions:


Keep the Current .html extension unchanged for just frontend purpose and use Apache .htaccess file to proxify your requests so that. Add this to your .htaccess file to
work:


RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^(.*).html .php



OR


Why not just have the HTML pages parsed as PHP? That way you can get the best of both php and html.


AddHandler application/x-httpd-php .php .html .htm

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@Bryan171

Just redirect by 301 HTTP status all your old URLs to the new ones. If you only change file extension, you can do it easily with an .htaccess file (if you use Apache as a web server).
Put these lines in your .htaccess file:

RedirectMatch 301 (.*).html$ www.example.com.php

Of course, change example.com by your domain name.

By using 301 redirects, you lose a little bit of SEO value (PageRank) for your pages but this is the best option you have.

P.S.: like Geoff Jackson suggests in comments, if you can use URLs without file extensions, it will be a good option because you will get better user friendly URLs. The .htaccess code for this:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.html -f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ .html

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