My web application used to generate not so SEO friendly urls. They used to be like this: https://example.com/search?category_id=208(And no this is not a search result page. This url is generated only when a user is clicked a particular category link )Now after doing some enhancements I am able to make the link generate a somewhat SEO friendly url as follows:https://example.com/search?category_id=metal-processing-and-machine-toolAnd now I am being asked to redirect old url to this new url instead of sending the old one to 404. I asked a SEO specialist if this right? He said This is totally wrong, your website might get penalised for doing this. Is he right?
Is redirecting old url to new url a bad idea with respect to SEO?
seo;redirects