ASP.NET MVC SEO url regression for indexed ASPX pages

12/29/2009

My love affair with with the ASP.NET MVC framework is becoming a mature relationship now, so now the real challenge comes: how do I migrate all my old websites, on the ASP.NET MVC platform, without losing all my search engine indexed ASPX pages?

As challenging as it may sound, it is actually really simple:

In the Global.asax configure your default route as something like this:

	//old urls:
            routes.MapRoute(
                "Default",                                              // Route name
                "{url}",                           // URL with parameters
                new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", url = "" }  // Parameter defaults
            ); 

Make sure you put this as the last route rule, because this rule catches everything that comes in the url.

Then in the home controller you can write something like this:

	public ActionResult Index(string url)
        {

            //page content
            StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();

            //pageTitle
            string pageTitle = "";

            switch (url)
            {
                case "blog.aspx":

                    //gets page specific query strings
                    string blogId = Request.QueryString["id"];

                    sb.Append("the blog id was: " + blogId);

                    break;
                default:

                    pageTitle = "index";

                    sb.Append("helo index");

                    break;
            }

            //final build out
            ViewData["page_title"] = pageTitle;
            ViewData["page_content"] = sb.ToString();

            return View();
        }

There is little more work you need to do by converting all your code blocks into strings which in most of my apps I am doing anyway, so that I can use them on page as well as in AJAX responses.