<p>Take a very simple case as an example, say I have this URL:</p>

<pre><code>http://www.example.com/65167.html
</code></pre>

<p>and I wish to serve that content under:</p>

<pre><code>http://www.example.com/about
</code></pre>

<p><strong>UPDATE</strong>: Note that the 'bad' URL is the canonical one (it's produced by a CMS which uses it internally for linking), so <code>"/about"</code> is just a way of polishing it.</p>

<p>I have two broad options: a server-side redirect or a client-side one. I always thought that server-side would be preferable since it's more efficient, i.e. HTTP traffic is approximately halved. However, SEO techniques tend to favour a single URL for a resource, thus client-side is to be preferred.</p>

<p>How do you resolve this conflict, and are there other factors I've omitted?</p>

Apache HTTPD's mod_rewrite can leave a browser showing a SEO-friendly URL in its location bar while redirecting to a numeric URL on the server:
```
```
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^/about$ /65167.html [L]
```
```