Upgrade Website from ASP to ASP.NET - SEO Ranking Effects?

[ITGeek]

Hi Guys,

I've got a few questions, i have been crawling the web all day for an answer, there are a lot of conflicting views.

I have a site currently with high rankings created in traditional asp, i have now created a new template in .net which will obviously carry a new extension .aspx instead of .asp.

I want to upgrade but at the same time i do not want to loose rankings. The new site will be hosted on the same domain name and with same filenames apart from the extension.

I have seen 3 options all with there own pro's and con's:

Method 1
301 Redirect on all .asp pages to .aspx pages
e.g. www(dot)domain(dot)com/page.asp 301 redirect to www(dot)domain(dot)com/page.aspx

any new links will point to the new page : www(dot)domain(dot)com/page.aspx

PRO : probably an easier way although a tedious task
CON : it has been said that all link juice is not passed through to the redirected page


Method 2
Url re-write the asp to point to .aspx - google will see the link as a .asp link
e.g. www(dot)domain(dot)com/page.asp

PRO : less chance of ranking drops as google wont see any difference (as far as i understand)

Method 3
Extensionless re-write on all urls
e.g. www(dot)domain(dot)com/page/


PRO : Techonology independant and future proof



I'd just like to know if anyone has had experience of the methods above and there advice, preserving the rankings is a must.


Thanks in advance!!

[ITGeek]

I was hoping someone could give me some direction on this please.

Thanks