I've been asked to assist in some SEO tweaking for a Real Estate site in order to improve Search engine placement on a couple of key phrases.
Having been given access to the code, I have discovered that the site is using mod_rewrite to serve the pages in a 'friendly' term which is quite useful.
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RewriteRule ^(.*)/(.*)/(.*) index.php?p=$1&name=$2&id=$3
A potential problem that I have is that internally, many of the links are hard coded to use the 'friendly' URL such as :
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<a href="<?php echo $domain;?>list-your-property/town-name/" title="LIST YOUR PROPERTY">LIST YOUR PROPERTY</a>
and
<a href="<?php echo $domain;?>detail-property/<?php echo $arr['ref'];?>/<?php echo $arr['id_property'];?>"><strong>Property Reference Number : </strong><?php echo $arr['ref'];?></a>
Is there any benefit in using friendly internal links (as these will be 'seen' by the search engines) or would it be best to go through the whole site changing references to the 'true' dynamic URL thereby allowing changes to the RewriteRule to not 'break' the site?
Following on from this, would it then be necessary to add a redirect rule to send any visitors using an old link to the new one?
Any advice or opinions on the best way to go gratefully accepted.
Thx