Correct Redirect method for switching pages from .html to /pretty urls/

[tgr0ss]

I have a customer that has all his site files as .html extensions and i'm going to rebuild this site into a wordpress site for easier management,

regarding the new permalink structure, should i just do a 301 redirect on this?

[HandsomeWeb]

Yes, most definitely.  I just did the exact thing.  I moved a site that had originally been on asp classic, then moved to php, now to word press.  The .asp pages were being processed as php by the server, and there were hundreds of pages.  Within two weeks of moving site to WordPress and doing the redirects I saw immediate ranking results.  Here are just a few redirects, the way I was making them:

redirect 301 /about-fort-worth-personal-injury-lawyer.php /about-for . . .
redirect 301 /arlington-personal-injury-lawyer-locations.php /arlingto . . .
redirect 301 /injury-law-news.php /injury-law-news/
redirect 301 /asbestos-claim.asp /asbestos-claim/
redirect 301 /auto-accident.asp /auto-accident/
redirect 301 /burns.asp /burns/
.
.
.

Here are the steps I took to save time.

• I created an xml sitemap at one of those free online sitemap creators and downloaded as CSV.
• Used the list in php script I wrote to scrape the text from each page on the old site and insert into the WordPress database using the file name as title (replacing - with space) and droping .asp or .php
• I recreated the redirects in Exel by combining a column of the old filenames and the newly created ones. Cut and pasted.
• The new url's were in Google in about 10 days.

[tgr0ss]

thaanks Chris!