Change website layout without affecting SEO

[Cheetah Designs]

I wish to rename a page of my website from "applications" to "development". The page that is indexed is mywebsite.com/applications.

Is it the case that I simply keep that redirect in page and just have it point to mywebsite.com/development?

 

[gord]

If it's a permanent change then I would use a 301 redirect in htaccess or equivalent to catch the applications url and move people on to the development page.

Google will pick this up too and transfer any existing rank to the development url. It will probably also re-evaluate it, but it rarely changes dramatically with just an url swap.

 

[Cheetah Designs]

Fair enough. I did want to loose all the backlink rep (if that makes sense)