301 Redirect For SEO

The “301″ refers to what is called the HTTP status code. This status code is what is returned to your browser (or search engine) when a page is requested.

The most familiar status code for the average person that uses the Internet is the “404″ page not found code. This happens when a page that you have requested is not found at the address that you visited.

A “301″ status code means that a page has permanently been moved to a new location. In contrast, the “302″ status code indicates that a page has only temporarily been moved.

Generally speaking, a 301 redirect is the most search engine friendly method for redirecting users and engines to a new location. This method should be used any time you have permanently moved a page, or site, to a new address.

This includes any time that you have changed the names of web pages in your site, moved your site to a new domain, or pointed an extra domain at an existing site.

There are a number of ways to accomplish the 301 redirect. Some are dependant on the server that you are hosted on, and some methods are pure choice.


Redirect in ColdFusion:
<.cfheader statuscode="301" statustext="Moved permanently">
<.cfheader name="Location" value="http://www.new-url.com">

Redirect in PHP:
<?
Header( "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" );
Header( "Location: http://www.new-url.com" );
?>

Redirect in ASP:
<%@ Language=VBScript %>
<%
Response.Status="301 Moved Permanently" Response.AddHeader
"Location", " http://www.new-url.com"
>

Redirect in ASP .NET:
<script runat="server">
private void Page_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
Response.Status = "301 Moved Permanently";
Response.AddHeader("Location","http://www.new-url.com");
}
</script>

.htaccess Redirect
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

If you are currently using a redirect in your site, you can use the following tool to verify that you are making proper use of the 301 redirect.

6 Comments

JayeshLodha

October 16, 2006 @ 7:34 am

Can any one help me to set 301 redirect correctly.

I have a one domain and 2 subdomain on it.

http://www.mydomain.com
and
http://sub1.mydomain.com
http://sub2.mydomain.com

When I will set 301 redirect from non www version of website to www version of the website, will it create a following urls mentioned below ?

http://www.mydomain.com
http://www.sub1.mydomain.com
http://www.sub2.mydomain.com

If it comes, how to correct ?

I also want to 301 redirect all the pages under

http://www.mydomain.com/sub1/ -> http://sub1.mydomain.com/
and
http://www.mydomain.com/sub2/ -> http://sub2.mydomain.com/

Can you help me to set all these right.

[Reply]

zacheos

October 22, 2006 @ 12:21 pm

Please take a look at the Module mod_rewrite
URL Rewriting Engine and the URL Rewriting Guide for more information on mod_rewrite and its uses. I can also be hired to make these changes for you… I can’t give everything away for free ;).

[Reply]

Jaxson

November 29, 2006 @ 5:23 am

Is there any special techniques that can be used to optimize a wordpress blog on my server for SEO. One issue I see is no way to change the title tags on each page, where it seems to take the blog name for the home page.
I have several hundred 600+ inbound links.
I have pinged Technorati manually and used pingoat as well as pingomatic every time I add a new blog.
There is plenty of content, about 30 articles.
What else can I do? What else should I do to optimize my blog?

[Reply]

zacheos

November 29, 2006 @ 5:54 pm

Yes! Please take a look at these posts here and here.

However - the best thing you could possibly do to promote your blog is POST LOTS OF CONTENT. I cannot stress this enough. Content is king when it comes to blogs.

[Reply]