Will changing page extensions from .html to .php require a redirect?
-
Hi.
We are launching a new website and our .html page extensions will be replaced with a .php page extension.
Example: www.theideapeople.com/web_design.html (current url)
www.theideapeople.com/web_design.php (new url)
Will this require any special treatment to maintain the page SEO ranking? Does it make a difference if you use a .html or .php? Thank you for your help and insight!
Jay
-
You might also consider writing the redirect so that you don't have any extensions (see the SEOmoz URL for an example). That way, whenever you next change technologies, your URL will still stay the same.
-
You're welcome, but please keep in mind that 301 redirects have an inherent loss of PageRank, even though it's quite small - no loss is better than some!
-
Thank you all very much for your help and answers. It is very much appreciated!!
-
Good stuff, thank you for taking the time to help!
-
Nice catch. I agree it should be:
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^(.*).html$ $1.php [R=301] -
The better solution is to keep the .html extensions but tell Apache to parse them as though they were php. This is easily done in .htaccess:
AddType application/x-httpd-php .htm .html
I do this with pretty much all of my sites because real .html files are still served fine, and when there is php code it is executed as it would be with a .php file.
-
Will that return a 301 header though? Shouldn't it include "R=301"?
-
If you are doing this to all pages on the site you can knock it out with an htaccess file like this:
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^(.*).html$ $1.php [NC] -
Hi Jay,
The two will be viewed as entirely different pages. You will need to 301 redirect all .html pages to the .php version.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Changing URL structure of site, including AMP - redirect AMP too?
So, I'm changing all the URLs of a site, including all its AMP URLs, I'll be redirecting all the normal URLs, but do I need to also redirect all the AMP pages?
Technical SEO | | alksfjasldfu934341 -
301 Redirects, Sitemaps and Indexing - How to hide redirected urls from search engines?
We have several pages in our site like this one, http://www.spectralink.com/solutions, which redirect to deeper page, http://www.spectralink.com/solutions/work-smarter-not-harder. Both urls are listed in the sitemap and both pages are being indexed. Should we remove those redirecting pages from the site map? Should we prevent the redirecting url from being indexed? If so, what's the best way to do that?
Technical SEO | | HeroDesignStudio0 -
Duplicate page errors from pages don't even exist
Hi, I am having this issue within SEOmoz's Crawl Diagnosis report. There are a lot of crawl errors happening with pages don't even exist. My website has around 40-50 pages but SEO report shows that 375 pages have been crawled. My guess is that the errors have something to do with my recent htaccess configuration. I recently configured my htaccess to add trailing slash at the end of URLs. There is no internal linking issue such as infinite loop when navigating the website but the looping is reported in the SEOmoz's report. Here is an example of a reported link: http://www.mywebsite.com/Door/Doors/GlassNow-Services/GlassNow-Services/Glass-Compliance-Audit/GlassNow-Services/GlassNow-Services/Glass-Compliance-Audit/ btw there is no issue such as crawl error in my Google webmaster tool. Any help appreciated
Technical SEO | | mmoezzi0 -
Why are pages linked with URL parameters showing up as separate pages with duplicate content?
Only one page exists . . . Yet I link to the page with different URL parameters for tracking purposes and for some reason it is showing up as a separate page with duplicate content . . . Help? rpcIZ.png
Technical SEO | | BlueLinkERP0 -
Redirects
I have a question about 404ed domains and old domains. #1 A domain has many links to it, but has been 404ed for 4 months. Should I redirect to a page I own and is almost exactly the same content. Will the fact that it was once 404ed be an issue? #2 I have an old domain that has many links but has been stagnant for a long time. Are these links still valuable and I should I redirect them to an important page on a different site? Does penguin influence your advice?
Technical SEO | | tylerfraser0 -
Are there any tools that will detect when new pages are added?
need help with keeping track of when new pages pop up that might compete internally with already optimized pages.
Technical SEO | | SEOmoxy0 -
Redirect questions
Hi! A client of mine have created a new site with a new URL structure which they launched the other day. They have done a 301 redirect on all pages on the old site to the start page on the new site. E.g:
Technical SEO | | lojdqvist
www.olddomain.com/subfolder1/index.html -> www.newdomain.com
www.olddomain.com/subfolder2/index.html -> www.newdomain.com I'm thinking of fixing this now so the redirect instead looks someting like this:
www.olddomain.com/subfolder1/index.html -> www.newdomain.com/newsubfolder1/index.html
www.olddomain.com/subfolder1/index.html -> www.newdomain.com/newsubfolder1/index.html Two questions: 1. Is it worth doing the latter kind of redirect in all cases (after all, it involves quite a lot more work compared to the first solution)? or do you recommend the first solution for all redirect projects?
2. Now that they have already done the first solution, is it at all worth amending this to the latter or is everything spoiled now that they have already gone ahead with the first solution? Many thanks in advance!0 -
Is there any value to a home page URL adding the /index.html ?
For proper SEO, which version would you prefer? A. www.abccompany.com B. www.abccompany.com/index.html Is there any value or difference with either home page URL??
Technical SEO | | theideapeople0