I have a PHP website where content is generated & shown on the website from SQL. File index.php uses pagination. Due to this a lot of pages generated about 1800 (index.php?page=1800) which got indexed in search engines instead of real content pages.
I want to change this & show a custom homepage(index.php) so the user can select content from category.
I know this page redirect can be done using .htaccess. something like this.
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^.*/index.php
RewriteRule ^(.*)index.php$ http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]
I want all index.php?page=xxxx redirect to index.php
As changing on live website can be dangerous also effect search results. So need some guidance, to do this in effective way and its impact on search results. If the old indexed pages can be removed from Google (if possible).