Should our URLs be rewritten?

[Tia9]

We have recently launched our new e-comm website in asp.net. Our developers set up our CMS to allow us to manually name pages with search engine friendly urls. We assumed that these were rewriting the default ones, but found that the database version of the page names have been retained. Our developers say that these are necessary to properly reference the database but our SEO company say these need to be 301 redirected to the friendly urls. Our developers warn that this could send us into a loop.

What is standard practice?

Thanks.

 

[jbenson001]

URLs do NOT need to be rewritten. The only reason for rewriting a URL is to make it easier for a user to access a specific page easily. The second reason is for SEO. However, how important SEO is to your site depends on what the site is used for and basically a business decision.

 

[Tia9]

Hi jbenson001,

Thanks for your reply. We did make the decision to create search engine friendly URLs but the question really is whether the original set of URLs should remain and if they need to be redirected to new pages.

Thanks

 

[yaknowss]

I would redirect your pages to prevent confusion of previous users who may have bookmarked a link that is no longer available because it was renamed. As long as you use the redirect URL for your SEO, you should be good.