Beginers guide to redirecting page using 301 redirect

In this article I will discuss page redirection techniques, what works and what to avoid.

Article Body:

Must read information about site redirection techniques, how it works and what factors to avoid.

What is page redirection and why you should use it in your site?

Let’s say you rewrite a webpage on your website, for making that webpage SEO friendly. As it make strong impact on theme of your webpage and its link popularity factors etc and you wish to insert keywords for improving visibility in the eyes of search engines and human readers.

Let’s take an example and elaborate the topic

Let’s say the page in question is about free SEO analysis of website and I named it page5.htm. Then when I read text in that page and I found out that Search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo etc use words or phrases in the actual file name as search keywords. Next time when i do a Google search after modified my webpage making it SEO friendly, when I search query regarding SEO analysis of website in Google then I found that my website SEO Spidy is listing in top result. As modifying my webpage and its Meta description and I bold certain keyword in it benefits me as top listing in Google. If you practice same thing then it will benefit to your webpage too.

Questions come in your mind about linking

You will have to point every link on your site to the new page name. If your site is small, then you can manage it easily but when your website is big portal and have 1000 of pages and pages are created dynamically then its major issue because more than 75 % make mistakes like creating duplicate content pages, permanent redirection not found, link rel tag not found, generating broken links etc. This will result in many factors like your site may stay long in Google sandbox for content penalty, visitors getting “404 page not found” error when clicking on your links, demotion in search engine for many keywords of your website etc.

Let’s use the previous example, for a long time my page is page5.html was indexed by major search engines. If someone types “Free seo analysis of website” in a search engine box, my page shows up on the second search results screen. But when I update it as Free-seo-analysis-of- website.html then it make strong impact as my website is listing top 3 result in first page of search result. This make a strong impact as search engine update my listing by cache it and remove obsolete page5.html

Lost Page Rank (PR) issues:

Google developed a proprietary algorithm that assigns a Page Rank (PR) to every page on the web. PR is a number from 1 to 10 (10 being the ideal) and is intended to be a representation of how useful and popular a given page is. PR is influenced by many factors, one of the crucial ones being Link Popularity. Link Popularity is a representation of how many “quality” or “relevant” sites link to your page. Without getting into too much detail, it is increasingly difficult and time consuming to achieve a high PR for your pages, especially if you don’t have a really unique website with exceptional and highly sought after content. When you rename a page and discard the old page, you also discard the PR of the page. Your renamed page will be seen as a totally new page, with 0 PR.

What is the solution?

I will start by enumerating some of the methods used by the non-initiated.

Not recommended solution 1: Duplicate content.

First thing that probably comes in your mind is: well, why can’t I just duplicate the page and let nature take its course. In other words, I will have two identical pages, one named page5.html and Free-SEO-Analysis-of-website.html. This gives me time to update all links and the search engines will eventually index the new page.

But unfortunately this solution is not viable because search engines will penalize my site quite badly, ‘thinking’ right that I am are trying to scam them by using the ‘duplicate content’ technique.

Not recommended solution 2: Custom error message.

If i could create a custom error page. However, I will lose rankings on the next search engine update as the file will appear to be non-existent. As discussed above, it could be some time before the page with the new name will be indexed and will appear in people’s searches. Also, your web site visitors will be frustrated by the fact that they now have to dig through your site to find the desired information.

Not recommended solution 3: An HTML Meta redirect.

You could implement a so called Meta refresh in a blank or customized page that has the name of the old page (in our example, page5.html) that points to the Free-seo-analysis-of-website.html webpage. The redirect can be instant, or delayed by a predetermine amount of time. The delayed redirect has the advantage that you can place an extra message, such as “please be aware that the page you are looking for changed location….. etc., etc…. you will be redirected automatically to the new location”

In the past, this was probably the most used technique.

Without getting into the mechanics of the Meta redirect, which is basically a META tag statement you add to your HEADER section, know that there are also JavaScript techniques that achieve similar results.

What is bad about this is that this is a technique often used by spammers to trick search engines and it should be avoided, unless the page is in a section of your site that isn't indexed (also known as spidered or crawled). Search engine spammers create a page that is optimized for certain keywords and phrases - it usually has no real content. The page is then picked up by some search engines, but when a visitor clicks on the search engine entry, they are redirected to another site, often unrelated. Most search engines have filters to detect this. Using this form of search engine deception will see a site eventually banned or penalized by major search giant such as Google, Bing, Yahoo.

The recommended redirect strategy  - 301 Redirect

A 301 redirect is the most efficient, visitor friendly, robot (spider, crawler) friendly and search engine friendly solution around for web sites that are hosted on servers running Apache. If you are not sure, check with your hosting provider.

A 301 redirect is just a set of commands you type into your .htaccess file.

When a visitor (whether human or robotic) requests a web page via any means, your web server checks for a .htaccess file. The .htaccess file contains specific instructions for certain requests, including security, redirection issues and how to handle certain errors.

The code "301" is interpreted as "moved permanently". After the code, the URL of the missing or renamed page is noted, followed by a space, then followed by the new location or file name.

First of all, you'll need to find the .htaccess file in the root directory of where all your web pages are stored. If there is no .htaccess file there, you can create one with Notepad or a similar application. Make sure when you name the file that you remember to put the "." at the beginning of the file name. This file has no tail extension.

Some hosting providers offer redirect services through their “control panels”, so you don’t have to perform low level changes on the .htaccess file itself. Instead, they provide a user friendly interface for this. Check with your hosting provider to see what the optimal way to perform a 301 redirect is in your case. I will continue the article with the barebones solution.

If there is a .htaccess file already in existence with lines of code present, be very careful not to change any existing line unless you are familiar with the functions of the file.

Scroll down past all the existing code, leave a line space, then create a new line that follows this example:

redirect 301 /folder/page5.html http://www.Seospidy.com/folder/Free-seo-analysis-of-website.html

It's as easy as that. Save the file, upload it back into your web and test it out by typing in the old address to the page you've changed. You should be instantly and seamlessly transported to the new location.

Notes: Be sure not to add "http://www" to the first part of the statement - just put the path from the top level of your site to the page. Also ensure that you leave a single space between these elements:

redirect 301 (the instruction that the page has moved)

/folder/page5.html (the original folder path and file name)

http://www.seospidy.com/folder/Free-seo-analysis-of-website.html (new path and file name)

The same format applies not only to renamed files, but also to files moved to a different location.

The 301 redirect is the safest way to preserve your rankings. On the next indexing (crawling, spidering), the search engine robot will obey the rule indicated in your .htaccess file and index the new page name every time a link or its internal database tries to access the old page. In the next update (again, this could take months), the old file name and path will be dropped and replaced with the new one. Sometimes you may see alternating old/new file names during the transition period, along with some possible fluctuations in rankings as things settle. Don't panic, this is normal.

What if your site is hosted on a Microsoft IIS server instead?

If you have access to the server, do this: In internet services manager, right click on the file or folder you wish to redirect. Select the radio titled "a redirection to a URL". Enter the redirection page, check "The exact url entered above" and the "A permanent redirection for this resource". Click "Apply".

If you do not have access to the server, ask your host to point you into the right direction.

In conclusion, the best and the most transparent way (to both human and robotic users) to rename and move files on your web site, while preserving your search engine ranks is the 301 redirect.