I am about to start on a migration from a static HTML site to an
ASP.NET solution. I've done a ton of these in the past as my primary
job duty is developing ASP.NET sites. This is the first project I've
come across for a site that has quite a few .HTM pages with good
search engine ranking. I want to make sure I do everything I can to
retain those rankings at least as far as the URLs are concerned. What
I want to do is make sure that when an old .HTM URL is requested that
the system 301 redirects to the equivalent ASP.NET page. My initial
thought is to create a database table of all the OLD virtual URLs
(ex: /products/product1/index.htm) and the new ASP.NET URL that they
should be redirected to. I could then set ASP.NET to process .HTM
pages and use a custom 404 handler to perform the redirection. Is this
the best way? Even if you think it is, what other solutions have you
used that may be easier or better?