(Entry was posted by Ryan Kellum on this post in the Dumb SEO Questions community on Facebook, 09/20/2017).

Changing the URL/file structure

When I change the URL/file structure from: Domain.com/index.html To Domain.com/pageName/ Should I do 301s for all of the old URLs? I`m new to this aspect of SEO and am lost. I have already put in to fetch/crawl and reindex with Google search console. It would appear that I`ve lost the initial ranking I gained. To clarify, this is a fairly new site with little to no traction in the SERPS. Any feedback is greatly appreciated!

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YOUR ANSWERS

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

Benj Arriola: The 301 redirect and the rel canonical in this situation have the same purpose. But doing both is a good practice. And in general, it is always good to have self-referencing canonical tags on most pages.