Q: When I redesign my website, the names of the pages will change to improve SEO. But I don’t want to lose the rankings I already have by sending search traffic to a nonexistent page. How can I make the switch without ruining what I’ve built so far?
A: Using a 301 permanent redirect, you can send visitors (and search engines) from an old URL that you are no longer using to the new one. As long as the content is still relevant to what they were looking for, your ranking will not suffer the fate reserved for those who simply remove pages that were performing well, resulting in a 404 “page not found” error.
If the move you are making will create more search engine friendly URLs and will appeal to the search engines in a better way, it is worth it to make the switch. Just be sure to make note of the pages within your site that are currently performing well in the engines, and make arrangements for redirects so you won’t lose those links.