301 redirect from .html to non .html?

[seointern]

Previously our site was using this as our URL structure: www.site.com/page.html. A few months ago we updated our URL structure to this: www.site.com/page & we're not using the .html.

I've read over this guide & don't see anywhere that discusses this: http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection.

I've currently got a programmer looking into, but am always a bit weary with their workarounds, as I'd previously had them cause more problems then fix it. Here is the solution he is looking to do:

The way that I am doing the redirect is fine. The problem is of where to put the code. The issue is that the files are .html files that need to be redirected to the same url with out a .html on them. I can see if I can add that to the 404 redirect page if there is one inside of there and see if that does the trick. That way if there is no page that exists without the .html then it will still be a 404 page. However if it is there then it will work as normal. I will see what I can find and get back.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

BJ

[seointern]

Sha,

I wanted to send a quick update & see if we're on the right track? After implementing this 301 redirect, I'm seeing a few negatives, but also a few positives & would appreciate your feedback:

Concerns:

• Google Organic Traffic has dropped by 26.65% since we implemented the redirect (12 Days).

• Top Content Pages From Search Traffic has dropped from a weekly average of 1,500 pages to 998. I've segmented the Analytics to see if I had more or less pages that were driving traffic to my site (Organic Only).

Positives:

• Bing Organic Traffic is up 32.15% although not substantial for our overall traffic, but it has increased.

• Yahoo Organic Traffic is up 26.53% less traffic than Bing, so not substantial.

• Webmaster Tools Pages crawled per day: http://screencast.com/t/krkD69bj3mG we've had a huge spike, which I'm assuming is a good thing & a direct correlation to the 301 redirect.

All this being said, are we on the right track? The initial traffic loss had me worried, but after seeing the crawl stats it gave me hope? Do i just need to be more patient to see this through? Are we missing anything, or is this what you would expect?

Thanks,

BJ

[ShaMenz]

Happy to help

If you strike any issues let me know.

Sha

[seointern]

Thanks for all the help Sha! We'll play with the example code that you'd sent & see what we can come up with. After a few weeks I'll continue to watch our organic rankings & see how it affects us overall.

Thanks,

BJ

[ShaMenz]

Not having seen the code your programmer intends to use, that is not possible to say definitively. That is why we built the test for you, so that you can see the code.

If you take a look at the code you will see that the Rule is writing 301 redirects if the conditions are met.

A .htaccess file is read from top to bottom. The first condition matched will be the one used.

Basically, you have one set of files on your server, all of which have the extension .html.

When a request is made, you are asking the server to load  the .html file in the browser, but rewrite a "pretty URL" for the user to see in the Address Bar.

So, there are three possible scenarios for a request:

1. the user requests /page.html (server loads.html and rewrites the URL to /page)
2. the user requests /page (server 301 redirects request to /page.html, loads it in the browser and rewrites the URL to /page)
3. the user requests a page that does not exist on the server (server 301 redirects the page to /404.html, loads it and rewrites the URL to /404)

Personally, I would not be going out of my way to rewrite simple URL's just to remove the .html extension, but that is your choice, and I am assuming there is more to it and you had some good reason for doing this in the first place.

The one thing you need to be cautious of in making these types of decisions is that chopping and changing from one thing to another and back again is not a great idea. A 301 redirect should really only be used when you are sure that you want to make a permanent change.

Hope that helps,

Sha

[seointern]

My fear with this approach is how the search engines will handle the redirect? I know that from the users perspective this should work, but I've never read any articles that even resemble this type of approach.

Do you believe that this method will pass the value along in the search engines & treat it as a proper 301 redirect.

Thanks,

BJ

[ShaMenz]

Hi BJ,

From the information you included here it seems your programmer's approach is sound.

We made a demo for you with a working test and example code for the .htaccess so that you can check that it will achieve your aim in any likely scenario.

Take a look at 301 Redirect and URL Rewrite Example

Hope that helps,

Sha