URL structure change causing PR drop?

[Evil Phil]

I've upgraded a clients website to a cms but didn't include any 301 redirects (My bad).

Any way the structure of the website has gone from static html to php with query string parameters so <domainname>/welcome.html is now <domainname>/index.php?p=welcome.

Page rank has dropped considerably. I'm assuming that the change in URL structure is the cause of this, can anyone offer advise on how to claw back some PR?

 

[mneylon]

Any chance you could do some 301 redirects based on the 404 errors?

 

[louie]

Rewrite Rules in your htaccess file

RewriteRule ^welcome.html$ index.php?p=welcome [L,NC]
# if you have more than 1 you could try
RewriteRule ^(welcome|home|products|other).html$ index.php?p=$1 [L,NC]

 

[Evil Phil]

@BK Yes, going to do that next.

@louie Thanks. Quick question though, should it not read

RewriteRule ^welcome.html$ index.php?p=welcome [L,R=301]

Or does [L,NC] do the same thing?

 

[louie]

No, because you are not redirecting but linking the new content to the old pages available in the SERPs, which means you are going back to "static pages" in the eyes of the SE.