[Steve-O]

Hi,

I've had a couple clients with this problem and never found a solid answer, hopefully someone can help! These clients come to us (small web design agency) for a re-design. The sites they currently have are already ranking well with google. Our SEO techniques involve changing the file names to certain keyword specific file names. My question is this: Does changing a filename that is already ranking well with Google hurt the ranking or anything? Like does it have to be re-indexed?

example:

about.html -> abt-companyname-chicago-il.html


I know that if they were already ranking well, we should just keep the same file names just to be safe, and for most of them, that is what we do. But I just want to know for future clients if there is a problem with changing the filenames and their current ranking on Google.

Any help is appreciated!

Steve

[darrenbale]

just make sure the pages are redirected properly and there shouldn't be an issue.
Obviously the new pages will be treated as such by the search engines, but with the redirect they should be indexed quicker and still perform well.

[S3 Web Design]

stuff on 301s here http://www.mcanerin....rect-apache.asp

[thefandango]

Yes it will ruin it unless you 301 it.

[Steve-O]

Okay so,

New page names will have to be re-indexed by the search engines unless we do a 301 redirect, makes sense, wanted to make sure though.

Thanks for your help everyone!

[rallport]

You should really be using 301 redirects E.g. 301 using htaccess

No using a 301 will resuklt in a 404 error when a user clicks the old link in the serps - which will affect your bounce rate. By using a 301, you're telling google that your page has moved elsewhere and eventually google to remove the old page from its index.

It may be worth using the canocial tag too - http://www.web-desig...onical-url-tag/

[neil0wen]

In theory a 301 redirect should solve the problem. However I have been researching this and it seems like these pages may not gain the old pages SEO benefits for several months, so I would make your clients aware that the SEO will not be immediate.

I would also add that your new URL name suggested is far too long and would not be good for SEO. Try keeping it to 2 words, 3 words max!