Will changing file extension affect SE rankings?

manpreet Best Answer 3 years ago

I'm updating a site and changing the pages from .html to .asp the pages will have the exact same name as the old html pages the only difference will be the file extension. Will this affect existing SE rankings? is there a solution? I'm on a Microsoft server no Apache for me here. Thanks in advance

manpreet 3 years ago

1. Yes, because a new extension makes the URL a new URL. All links and rankings your current page has will be lost.

2. No, because you can do a 301 redirect from the old URL to the URL will tells the search engines your page has moved and where it has moved to. All links and rankings will (eventually) be restored to the new page.