How to AVOID SEO Hit when Implementing PrettyURLs

[drewactual]

i thought i'd post this here, too, just as it was posted at SMF support... I think it may take some of the trepidation out of purchasing this fine product for forum users that are worried about initial hit to SEO when implementing PrettyURL's.

here it is:

here is a little bit of a public service announcement.. regarding PrettyURL's and SEO for forums installing PrettyURLS that have been established for some time, and sites that are concerned with ranking or visibility....

I've been running PrettyURL's for a while... most pages have bounced back in the rankings after making the change.  Some haven't, though, and those pages using the old patter url ( ?board= ) still rank higher than the 'new' ones.

well, i'm an idiot for not doing this sooner.  I don't know if i'm an idiot alone, or if there are a bunch of us- but i'm sharing this to help everyone who's made the change and are perhaps still waiting, as i was, for there forum to 'recover' in the ranks...

this is SO simple.

go to your google console.  inspect url... type in the OLD url ( ?board= )... inspect it- your htaccess will see the the incoming request and shove it through the prettyURL rewrites hiding out in your htaccess, and send google to the same page that is using PrettyURLs.. confirm it is indexed, searchable/can be crawled... and... hit the "webpage has changed" button and request a new index...

that freakin' simple... meta descriptions, OG tags, and my particular implementation of H1's, 2's, and 3's- that i've been waiting forever for google to get around to- were changed to reflect the new pages (using the old links) almost instantly.

the only thing that may cause an issue is canonical...

make certain and have "index.php?board=" 'allowed' in your robots.txt.  whaplappahpoo- you'll be good in minutes using the same links you were ranking with prior to implementing prettyURLS... i was amazed at how fast it took hold.  and hopefully, since perhaps you're reading this, is there a way you can implement, in a future release, websites being approached using the 'old' url structure to either 302 to the new one and/or a code to strip 'canonical' out of the 'old' structure?

Thanks for your work, Sir.. it's worked out well for me.

good luck!

VB- I know you likely know this^, but.... perhaps you can add it to your readme or something for new users?  methinks it may remove a lot of the trepidation out of using your product.

[drewactual]

to add:  your messages and threads are in constant flux, so I wouldn't worry about having google re-index individual pages UNLESS you have one thread that generates a lot of interest from search engines...

i WOULD, however, recommend you re-index each board. 

[SMFHacks]

Moved and set to topic stick in the Pretty Urls forum. Will check it out in the google console might have to do a video to explain the steps.