Impact of removing trailing slashes

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Impact of removing trailing slashes

All urls on the site have trailing slashes, what happens if I remove the?

graeme_p

7:39 am on Jul 23, 2007 (gmt 0)

I currently have a site in which all urls have trailing slashes, like this:

http://example.com/mypage/

mypage is a page, not a directory.

I want to use a CMS (Drupal) that does not work well with this (because it has a whole lot of other features I need). What is likely to be the impact of changing all urls to:

http://example.com/mypage

Of course, I will do redirects, but is that enough to be safe?

new_seo

8:03 am on Jul 23, 2007 (gmt 0)

See,the redirection process is very sensitive.If you are doing it properly and carefully then it's fine.But a small mistake in the coding or a in proper activities in HP can be harmful.

Keep few things in mind:
1. Use 301 redirection process,it's search engine friendly.
2. Be careful while writing the code.Take help from a professional.
3. All the values of your old url will be transfered to the new one,but it will take some time.May be initially you will lose your previous rank.Don't need to worry abut that,it's short term effect.Give search engine some time to recognize your new URL.After this recognition all the value of old one will be transferred to the new and we will get back your rank.
4. Don't change anything in the content,redirect it as it is right now.If you have any plans about content modification,do that once your new URL recognized by SE.Any content modification during the redirection or in the mid of value transfer can be harmful for SERP.
Hope things are clear to you.
:)

graeme_p

11:18 am on Jul 23, 2007 (gmt 0)

Thanks, that is exactly the sort of thing I want to know. In fact I can meet the requirements you outline quite easily:

1. There is a module to do it
2. The module widely used (so should be well tested!).
3. Ouch! But it cannot be helped, and with some reassurance that it will not be permanent I will get less stressed about it.
4. I will not be modifying existing content. The one thing that worries me is that I have a related pages navigation section in the sidebar, and that might need to change (i.e. different links may appear in it). I will try and keep it the same.

Thanks again.