We are changing a very well ranked website from a static setup to one driven by an sql database, hosted on linux.
The result of this is that the page names will change.
I have three questions:

1. What is the best way to migrate change from www.mycompany.com/existing-page.html to www.mycompany/new-page.php.
2. What effect will there be changing from keywords in page name to keywords as part of the url string?
3. What about inlinks - will setting up a 301 be sufficient in long term or will in links have to be physically changed?

Please refer to http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=19644

We are changing a very well ranked website from a static setup to one driven by an sql database, hosted on linux.
The result of this is that the page names will change.
I have three questions:

1. What is the best way to migrate change from www.mycompany.com/existing-page.html to www.mycompany/new-page.php.
2. What effect will there be changing from keywords in page name to keywords as part of the url string?
3. What about inlinks - will setting up a 301 be sufficient in long term or will in links have to be physically changed?

I would suggest the best way by far to do this is to use Mod Rewrite to rewrite your main and best ranking NEW URLS to the same as the original OLD urls...

In my past experience at least, even using 301 redirects, if the page name is changed, you dont keep the PR you used to have....

granted, it 'may' come back to where it was once the Seprs work out what has happened but nothing is guaranteed in this game :)

Specific answers

1. Add this to your .htaccess in your site root (sorry if you knew this already)

Redirect 301 /olddir/oldpage.html http://www.maindomain.com/newpage.html


Note/ Don't add "http://www" to the first part of the statement - place the path from the top level of your site to the page. Also you must leave a single space between these elements:

redirect 301 (the redirect instruction)
/olddir/oldpage.html (the original folder path and file name)
http://www.maindomain.com/newpage.html (new path and file name)
2. Tricky one to be sure on...I would say it could possibly help your rankings for those pages and keywords..I would not think it will have a negative effect unless the URLS are spammy.

3.If I were you I would use 301's for inlinks initially and work to recode them to the correct URLs. Mainly to keep things tidy