An important aspect of search engine optimization involves redirecting old domain names and page addresses to new locations. This may be because your company re-branded, your law firm changed partners, or because the new domain name has more value. You may also be doing a “canonical redirect” which ensures that the www or the non-www version of the domain is the only permanent address for the site, which prevents confusion in the search engines. Whatever the reason, improperly redirected traffic can prevent you from holding on to the “link equity” that comes from old domains or older pages.
How do you verify a proper redirect? You use a header checker, which reveals information that is normally only useful to servers. Two sites with free header checkers are:
http://www.seoconsultants.com/tools/headers.asp
http://www.webconfs.com/http-header-check.php
To use these tools, just put your domain name or page (including the http://www.) into the checker and press the button. You should get quite a bit of information, but the result you are looking for should be the number “301” and the phrase “moved permanently.” For the search engine “301” is the important factor.
If you see anything other than a 301, you should find out why. For instance, “302” means that the site is being temporarily redirected, so your new site or page location does not get the value of all the links that have been pointing at it. Some hosting companies offer “permanent redirects” but an examination of the code in a header checker tells a different story. 302 redirects do not pass link value, so they need to be addressed. If you see the number 200, you are probably getting redirected via a meta refresh, which is not ideal and can create search engine issues. The number 200 can also indicate that the domain is not going anywhere at all, so you should look at it to see what comes up. Numbers like 404 and 410 indicate bigger problems, like missing site pages.
It is also important to follow the rest of the information returned with the 301, like the address that the redirect goes to. Ideally, it should be a single landing page. If you see that the redirect is going to another redirect (which does happen) then it is usually best to ensure that you change your redirect rules so you end up at your destination. Currently, the prevailing wisdom in the SEO industry is that around 10% of a domain’s link popularity is lost in the process of a redirect, so subsequent redirects compound the loss of link value.
For canonical redirects, each non-www (or opposite) page should resolve to its counterpart. A well executed canonical redirect can improve search engine rankings for sites that have a variety of links to www and non-www pages.
As soon as your redirect is in place, it is very important to check the site and header immediately, since a small error in setting up a redirect can make a site unreadable to humans and search engines. Properly executed redirects can preserve and channel valuable link popularity, and streamline the acceptance of a new site design in the eyes of Google, Yahoo, Bing, and other engines. While there are several different methods for redirecting pages, depending on your server configuration, checking the final result with a third-party header checker ensures that the world of the internet is seeing your site the way you want it to be seen.
Tags: 301 redirect, 301 redirects
