Does changing server language/page extension have any affect on SEO?
For example, would changing a site from ASP pages (.asp) to .NET pages (.aspx) have any negative affect on rankings simply because the page extension is different?
3 Responses
flybishop
16 Feb 2010
Jim H
16 Feb 2010
I know html to asp will effect your SEO. To prevent this, make temporary redirect out of those .asp pages to point to the new aspx pages just in case.
CPAWebGuy
16 Feb 2010
I’m level 1. Not allowed to vote, But listen to flybishop. He’s spot-on.
Yes and no.
I say no because SEO has everything to do with content, such as text and titles, and incoming and outgoing links. Because of this your content will still be the same.
And I say yes because to a web crawler, these pages will be new because of the new extension, while the old extension now gives 404 errors which is bad for SEO.
But you have a solution. You need to keep the old pages there, but they don’t need to have any content, just make them throw a 301 error code in the header, then throw a Location to the new file. Web crawlers will then associate the new page with the old page and carry forward all the rankings. The other problem is incoming links. Those people will still have the old link, but at least it will forward to the new page.