Rewriting URLs for already established website?

[MaxS]

Hi,

What do you think about mod_rewritten URLs? I'm considering rewriting all the URLs for my already well-established website.

The current link structure for the content is:
view-{content}.php?id={number}

None of the content pages has a high rank on any SE, only the index page does.

Do you think it's worth a shot? I would of course 301 redirect all the old pages to the new URL.

Thanks

[Chris]

If you do not have good rankings or incoming links on the current URLs, you have nothing to lose.

[MaxS]

Well, I have a lot of incoming links for the current URLs.

The category pages (which are mod_rewritten) rank well but the individual content pages do not.

Some pages have thousands of incoming links.

[Chris]

If you've gotten so many incoming links already, I wouldn't rewrite the URLs. Maybe for new content, but not the old stuff.

[MaxS]

You don't think a 301 would take care of that?

Hmm...I hate these type of decisions.

[andyf]

301 redirect; will just give hint to spiders and visitor about the change in path but you will lose all the link popularity for that page.

[Chris]

I wouldn't risk the redirect messing up. It may work, it may not, and if it doesn't you're screwed.

[rpanella]

If none of the content pages with a query string are ranking at all and its not just temporary, it may be worth it to try rewriting them. I know for a while Google had problems indexing ?id=#### since this was a common fingerprint for session ids. I don't think this should be an issue anymore though but its something to keep in mind.

If there are other on page changes you could make first I would try those, but if all else fails, a url rewrite might be a good last resort.
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