To change url to user friendly url

Question

I'm re-factoring my asp.net application from asp.net 3.5 to 4.0. Also I'm changing url to user friendly url. Example

/product.aspx?id=100          to    /product-name/100

All my pages indexed by search engines and the site already 6 years online. I'm planning to do 301 redirect from old pages to new one.

I want to make sure I won't loose the rank and traffic.

Any suggestion how to do it properly?

Answer 1

Use a 301 redirect. This will tell the search engines, and your users, where to find those pages under their new URL. This will preserve the rankings of any pages this is done for.