Know-How Exchange : SEO/SEM

Kathleen is right on the money.

Assuming your pages are not ASP or PHP and your site does not contain an excessive amount of flash-
Renaming your pages will definitely affect your SE current rankings and indexing-

The 301 redirects are not any guarantee with Google and their feeds - they simple act as a guide for the spider, and could assist as a directional beacon.

A lot depends if you are happy with your current rankings? ?? If you have not major rankings then use this as an opportunity to get those rankings - if you are happy here are a few precautions to take:

If you must rename your pages check your Meta titles: try and keep them the same - metatags make certain you have not severly altered your word count density - keep your meta descriptions consistent.

Next do NOT wait to see your rankings ----immediately submit 5 pages of your new site per day No more than 5 pages per day to https://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl
then test your pages in the following link https://www.marketleap.com/siteindex/ every 2 weeks

While you are waiting to see what happens open Google Ad account and spend a few dollars on key words. It will make you feel a little better

Hope this helps.

Good Luck & Happy Marketing

If you are changing technology to .net then you won't be able to keep your page names the same. (about.php will change to about.aspx) It has to have the same extension to have the same name, which you can't have.

Here are three things to help:

1. It is important to keep any links pointing to your home page of your website, pointing to your root URL, both before and after the switch. Links should point to https://www.bigoakinc.com/ not https://www.bigoakinc.com/index.php. I wrote about this on my blog here: Correct Linking for Home Page

2. And, yes a 301 redirect is a good idea, but here is something else to think about. Try using a 302 redirect at first and here is why. You won't lose the search engine rank as you will initially with a 301, after all it will be considered a new page. The key is timing. When you start your new linking campaign and the new pages become indexed in the search engines you can change the 302 to a 301. It won't hurt to have a little overlap.

A little more work to be sure, but you'll have much less downtime in the search results and that can mean more customers while the switch happens.

I realize this is unconventional advice but it has been tested and works.

3. Make sure you are using a 404 Error page. You can view advice on creating one: Error Pages are a good idea.

I recommend spending $25. and investing 9 hours of your own time in training at: https://movielibrary.lynda.com/html/modListing.asp?sid=206 and do it yourself. You will be surprised how easy it is and you will have a complete understanding on how it works.
I have found that if you don't change your page names or meta you should be fine.