Where/how do you set up 301 redirects when keeping the same domain and not preserving the filename?

[SEODarren]

Hi there,

I'm just reaching to to ask for some help in understanding where 301 redirects should be set up on a website when keeping the same domain but not preserving the original filenames?

Essentially what is happening is an old website is being completely overhauled and brought up to date from a technical and usability standpoint. While the SEO isn't great naturally many of the pages have been indexed by google over time. A few pages have decent statistics and I don't want to lose the juice from them, but they do still need a lot of improving.

So my question is this, would all the redirection take place in the .htaccess file only in this case?

From reading here on Moz I think this is the case, but I need to confirm that. I was reading this article which has thrown me slightly: https://moz.com/learn/seo/redirection but this seems more complex as the website was actually moving domains.

Open to any insight and if you need further clarification or information let me know.

[MattRoney]

I'm by no means an authority on this topic, but I'd definitely use .htaccess to place those redirects, myself. It won't matter that the original filenames no longer exist. That's certainly what I've done as an SEO in the past.