301 redirects effect on SEO

Hi

I'm looking to set up a 301 redirect in my .htaccess file to remove the .html at the end of urls and replace them with a slash /

So, urls that right now look like this:

xxx.penny-slot-machines.com/no-deposit-casinos.html

Will look like this:

xxx.penny-slot-machines.com/no-deposit-casinos/


The reason is that this will make uploading much much easier using the web design program that I use (Freeway Pro 5) and will save me tonnes of grief.

Q1/ Is this the right type of redirect to use in this situation?

Q2/ Will it adversely affect my SEO and the PR from inbound links, though?


Cheers in advance for any advice

Are you saying that no-deposit-casinos.html will no longer be named that?

And if the design software doesn't allow you to name the pages what you want, I'd say get anoth design software....

Rick
Universal4

Slight mistake in that original post, it's more to do with index files, that I would like to make into files that are not index (the software needs an index file for each folder I have, but I want to take out a whole bunch of folders)

Basically, I want to change urls like:

no-deposit-casinos/index.html

into:

no-deposit-casinos.html

(so, they will no longer be an "index" file)




Basically it's a whole load of pages that were in wordpress, but are now incorporated into my site directly

You'll be fine...just be sure to 301 the existing file to avoid duplication and assign a dominant domain in google webmaster central.

Brilliant, cheers for that, much appreciated!

When you say 'dominant domain', Gary, do you mean the www bit, or is there somewhere I can say I want it to prefer files without the .index as opposed to those with it?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by penny-slot-machines

When you say 'dominant domain', Gary, do you mean the www bit, or is there somewhere I can say I want it to prefer files without the .index as opposed to those with it?

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yourwebsite.com resolves to http://yourwebsite.com which is classified as a unique domain apart from http://www.yoursite.com

The www and the http://www versions are seen as separate domains and need to be canonicalised via Webmaster Central - tell it which one you want to have as your primary so you don't lose any back links.

As far as the .com/index and .com/index.html versions you need to just eliminate them all together if you don't have any back links to them - if you do, do a 301.

Cheers

Would you please share the code with me you are using. As i would like to do the same thing :)