How to Use a 301 Redirect to Keep Your Web Pages from Dropping Off the Face of the Earth
How to Use a 301 Redirect to Keep Your Web Pages from Dropping Off the Face of the Earth
The Complete Guide to Mastering the Art of Server Redirection
The Complete Guide to Mastering the Art of Server Redirection
Let me tell you about the single worst thing most people do to their site...
They move pages. Sounds so simple, right? Change a file name, put an article in a different directory, or even give the site a new domain name.
However, when you change the address of a page without leaving a forwarding address, you create three problems:
- You break all the incoming links that were pointing at that page.
- You break your user's bookmarks.
- You give the search engines a Not Found error, causing them to drop your page from their listings.
Changing any aspect of your page's URL will result in broken links, broken bookmarks, and de-indexed pages—not to mention lost traffic and revenues for your site. That includes changing any of the following...
- Changing a web page file name, such as flower.html to flowers.html.
- Changing a web page file extension, such as .html to .php.
- Changing a directory name, such as /directory/file.html to /directory2/file.html.
- Modifying (or leaving off) URL variables that are necessary to retrieve a page, such as http://www.domain.com/index.asp?id=45 (where id=45 is a necessary variable).
- Changing a subdomain name, such as www.domain.com/phpbb to forum.domain.com.
In short, changing even the smallest detail of your page's URL (the Intern...