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

What’s page redirection and why would you need to use it?

Let’s say you rename a web page in your web site, for whatever reason. Perhaps you determined to revamp your entire naming convention, maybe you decided to restructure your website and wish to maneuver pages into different folders, or you just realized that you’re lacking helpful keywords.

Let’s elaborate a bit on the keywords challenge, since it’s part of your search engine rating success.

Let’s say the page in question is about personalized USB drives and also you named it page1.htm. Then you definitely read some search engine optimisation (Search Engine Optimization) articles and also you came upon that some engines like google use phrases within the actual file name as search keywords. Next time you do a Google search, check out the outcomes, most can have phrases in the actual file title (in the URL part) bolded, denoting a keyword match. Your USB drives page will definitely profit if named something like custom_usb_drives.htm instead.

Now that you renamed your page, you just created a symphony of issues for your self, for your users and in your place in search engine results.

Linking points:

You will have to level every link on your web site to the new web page name. In case your web site is small, it should not be an enormous deal, but if your site is large, you will inevitably make mistakes, primarily forgetting a hyperlink or two. It will lead to visitors getting the dreaded “404 page not found” error when clicking in your hyperlinks, robots (additionally know as crawlers or spiders) avoiding you, etc. Also, if you are heavily relying on visitors from search engines, then once more, individuals will get a “404 web page not found error”.

Let’s use the previous example, for a very long time your page1.htm was listed by major search engines. If somebody types “customized usb drives” in a search engine field, your web page shows up on the first search outcomes screen. That’s unbelievable, provided that someone clicks on the hyperlink, they will be pointed to page1.htm, to not custom_usb_drives.htm, as a result of the primary web page is the one within the search engine’s index. It’s going to take time, generally months, earlier than the search engines update their indexes along with your new page name.

Lost Web page Rank (PR) points:

Google developed a proprietary algorithm that assigns a Page Rank (PR) to each page on the web. PR is a number from 1 to 10 (10 being the ideal) and is meant to be a representation of how useful and in style a given page is. PR is influenced by many elements, one of many crucial ones being Link Popularity. Link Popularity is a representation of how many “quality” or “related” websites link to your page. Without stepping into an excessive amount of element, it is increasingly tough and time consuming to achieve a excessive PR to your pages, especially if you happen to don’t have a very unique website with exceptional and extremely sought after content. If you are merely operating a industrial web site, in a competitive market (akin to promoting customized branded USB drives, as in our instance), then it takes loads of time and onerous work to build an excellent page PR.

When you rename a web page and discard the old page, you also discard the PR of the page. Your renamed web page will be seen as a completely new web page, with zero PR.

What’s the solution?

I’ll begin by enumerating a few of the strategies utilized by the non-initiated.

Not really helpful solution 1: Duplicate content.

First thing that in all probability is available in you mind is: properly, why can’t you just duplicate the web page and let nature take its course. In different words, you’ll have an identical pages, one named page1.htm and one custom_usb_drives.htm. This gives you time to replace all hyperlinks and the various search engines will eventually index the brand new page.

This answer just isn’t viable as a result of search engines will penalize you fairly badly, ‘considering’ that you are making an attempt to scam them by utilizing the ‘duplicate content’ technique.

Not recommended solution 2: Customized error message.

You might create a customized error page. Nevertheless, you’ll lose rankings on the next search engine update as the file will seem like non-existent. As mentioned above, it could be some time before the web page with the brand new name will probably be listed and can appear in individuals’s searches. Also, your website online guests will be pissed off by the fact that they now must dig by means of your website to seek out the desired information.

Not recommended resolution 3: An HTML Meta redirect.

You could possibly implement a so known as Meta refresh in a blank or custom-made page that has the identify of the previous web page (in our example, page1.htm) that points to the new page. The redirect may be on the spot, or delayed by a predetermine amount of time. The delayed redirect has the benefit you can place an extra message, comparable to “please remember that the page you might be searching for changed location….. etc., and so forth…. you can be redirected automatically to the new location”

Up to now, this was probably probably the most used technique.

Without entering into the mechanics of the Meta redirect, which is basically a META tag assertion you advert to your HEADER part, know that there are additionally Java Script techniques that obtain similar results.

What’s bad about this is that this can be a approach usually used by spammers to trick serps and it should be avoided, except the page is in a piece of your site that is not listed (also called spidered or crawled). Search engine spammers create a page that is optimized for sure keywords and phrases - it usually has no real content. The web page is then picked up by some search engines, but when a visitor clicks on the search engine entry, they’re redirected to a different site, usually unrelated. Most engines like google have filters to detect this. Using this type of search engine deception will see a site finally banned or penalized by main gamers such as Google.

The really helpful redirect technique  - 301 Redirect

A 301 redirect is essentially the most efficient, visitor friendly, robotic (spider, crawler) friendly and search engine friendly resolution around for websites which might be hosted on servers working Apache. If you’re unsure, examine along with your hosting provider.

A 301 redirect is only a set of instructions you sort into your .htaccess file.

When a visitor (whether or not human or robotic) requests an internet page by way of any means, your internet server checks for a .htaccess file. The .htaccess file accommodates specific instructions for sure requests, together with safety, redirection issues and how you can handle certain errors.

The code “301″ is interpreted as “moved completely”. After the code, the URL of the missing or renamed page is famous, followed by a space, then followed by the brand new location or file name.

To start with, you may need to seek out the .htaccess file in the root listing of the place all of your web pages are stored. If there is no .htaccess file there, you’ll be able to create one with Notepad or the same application. Be certain once you identify the file that you keep in mind to place the “.” originally of the file name. This file has no tail extension.

Some hosting suppliers supply redirect services via their “control panels”, so that you don’t need to carry out low level adjustments on the .htaccess file itself. As an alternative, they supply a person friendly interface for this. Examine with your hosting provider to see what the optimum solution to carry out a 301 redirect is in your case. I’ll proceed the article with the barebones solution.

If there’s a .htaccess file already in existence with lines of code present, be very careful to not change any present line until you are aware of the capabilities of the file.

Scroll down previous all the present code, depart a line area, then create a new line that follows this example:

It is as simple as that. Save the file, upload it again into your net and check it out by typing in the previous address to the web page you have changed. You need to be immediately and seamlessly transported to the brand new location.

Notes: Be certain to not add “http://www” to the first part of the statement - just put the path from the highest degree of your website to the page. Additionally be certain that you permit a single area between these elements:

redirect 301 (the instruction that the page has moved)

/folder/page1.htm (the original folder path and file name)

http://www.you.com/folder/custom_usb_drives.htm (new path and file title)

The same format applies not only to renamed information, but in addition to recordsdata moved to a special location.

The 301 redirect is the most secure solution to preserve your rankings. On the following indexing (crawling, spidering), the search engine robot will obey the rule indicated in your .htaccess file and index the new page title every time a hyperlink or its inner database tries to entry the old page. Within the next replace (again, this could take months), the previous file name and path shall be dropped and replaced with the brand new one. Sometimes you may see alternating outdated/new file names in the course of the transition interval, along with some potential fluctuations in rankings as issues settle. Do not panic, this is normal.

What in case your site is hosted on a Microsoft IIS server as an alternative?

If you have access to the server, do this: In web companies supervisor, proper click on the file or folder you want to redirect. Select the radio titled “a redirection to a URL”. Enter the redirection page, examine “The exact url entered above” and the “A everlasting redirection for this useful resource”. Click “Apply”.

If you should not have access to the server, ask your host to level you into the appropriate direction.

In conclusion, the most effective and the most clear way (to each human and robotic customers) to rename and transfer recordsdata on your web page, while preserving your search engine ranks is the 301 redirect.

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Tags: page redirect, page rename, redirect, rename