301 Redirect: A Friendly SEO Approach for Web Page Replacements

The most efficient way to implement a webpage replacement without affecting your search engine optimization is with a 301 redirect. A 301 redirection basically tells the search engine, “Hey, this web page has permanently changed.” The search engines get the message that you want them to index the new page and disregard the one currently indexed. If you need to change file names or move pages around, 301 redirects will always be your safest solution – especially where SEO is concerned.

A 301 approach will help you to prevent the disruption of any important existing search engine rankings for the particular page. It’ll allow you to keep all the link juice the page may have acquired and prevent any duplicate content issues that could arise if both versions are indexed. Creating a 301 redirect also makes for a better user experience as it is better for the viewer to be redirected than to see a blaring 404 Page Not Found across their screen.

How a 301 redirect is executed depends on your server and the type of redirection you’re trying to accomplish, as there are different strategies for implementing the change for an entire website or just a page. To find out how to 301 redirect successfully, read our previous posts for a more in-depth explanation. Please visit our 301 Redirects for Apache Servers – Linux 301 Redirect Advice post or our 301 Redirect for Windows Server post, depending on your website server.

301 Redirects for Apache Servers - Linux 301 Redirect Advice

Note: Windows Servers use different instructions, which can be found in this posting

Our blog posting on verifying 301 redirects led to several questions about the technical details of redirects. Therefore, we are posting some information which you may find useful.

Below you will find out how to do canonical 301 redirects, redirect individual pages, and redirect whole domains.

301 redirects for Linux/Apache servers are created using a special file called .htaccess. Once the redirects have been specified in this file, it is simply uploaded to the root of the hosting account and the server handles it from there. 301 redirects can be easily created in this way for both shared and dedicated hosting accounts.

Very special note: This information is by no means comprehensive. Creating .htaccess files should be done carefully. If you already have an HTACESS file, you should back it up, so if anything goes wrong, you can revert to the old code!

Creating a 301 Redirect to Solve Canonicalization Duplicate Content

Canonicalization duplicate content is created when a site shows content at http://www.domain.com and http://domain.com. Search engines consider this 2 separate sets of content (even though they're both exactly the same), and this can sometimes negatively impact the site's rankings.

A 301 redirect can be set up to force all non-www URLs to the corresponding www URLs, or vice versa. In addition to eliminating any potential duplicate content issues, this will also combine the strength of all links pointing to both non-www and www pages on the site, allowing the site to maximize the impact of any link to its pages.

REQUIREMENT: The following 301 redirect instructions will NOT work unless the Apache ModRewrite module is enabled on the hosting server. This is a standard Apache module that is normally enabled by default, so if the redirects don't work within 24 hours of uploading the .htaccess file you will need to contact the hosting company or administrator to check if ModRewrite is enabled.

From non-www to www:

1. FTP into the site's hosting account and check to see if there's an existing .htaccess file.


2. If there's not, create a file in Notepad or any text editor called .htaccess (technically, this file is just an extension with no name).
   Note: Some programs may not let you create a file with no name and just an extension, and if you need to email this file to a webmaster for implementation many email clients such as Outlook may refuse to send it. To get around this, create the file with a regular name like "test.htaccess", and then rename it in an FTP client right before uploading


3. Paste the code below this list into the site's .htaccess file:


4. Upload the file into the root directory of the site’s hosting account.
   Once the .htaccess file has been uploaded, it should take effect within 24 hours or less. If it does not, check with the hosting company or administrator to make sure that the ModRewrite module is enabled for the site's hosting account.

Code:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yoursite.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.yoursite.com/$1 [R=301,L]



From www to non-www:

1. FTP into the site's hosting account and check to see if there's an existing .htaccess file.


2. If there's not, create a file in Notepad or any text editor called .htaccess (technically, this file is just an extension with no name).
   Note: Some programs may not let you create a file with no name and just an extension, and if you need to email this file to a webmaster for implementation many email clients such as Outlook may refuse to send it. To get around this, create the file with a regular name like "test.htaccess", and then rename it in an FTP client right before uploading


3. Paste the code below this list into the site's .htaccess file:


4. Upload the file into the root directory of the site’s hosting account.

Code:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.yoursite.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://yoursite.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Once the .htaccess file has been uploaded, it should take effect within 24 hours or less. If it does not, check with the hosting company or administrator to make sure that the ModRewrite module is enabled for the site's hosting account.

Creating a 301 Redirect from One Internal Page to Another

1. FTP into the site's hosting account and check to see if there's an existing .htaccess file.


2. If there's not, create a file in Notepad or any text editor called .htaccess (technically, this file is just an extension with no name).
   Note: Some programs may not let you create a file with no name and just an extension, and if you need to email this file to a webmaster for implementation many email clients such as Outlook may refuse to send it. To get around this, create the file with a regular name like "test.htaccess", and then rename it in an FTP client right before uploading


3. Paste the following code into the site's .htaccess file:
   Redirect 301 /oldpagename http://domain.com/newpagename
   Note: If you need to redirect multiple pages, simply add a new line to the .htaccess file for each page you'd like to redirect.


4. Upload the file into the root directory of the site’s hosting account.
   Once the .htaccess file has been uploaded, it should take effect within 24 hours or less. If it does not, check with the hosting company or administrator to make sure that the ModRewrite module is enabled for the site's hosting account.

Creating a 301 Redirect from an Old Domain to a New One

1. FTP into the site's hosting account and check to see if there's an existing .htaccess file.


2. If there's not, create a file in Notepad or any text editor called .htaccess (technically, this file is just an extension with no name).
   Note: Some programs may not let you create a file with no name and just an extension, and if you need to email this file to a webmaster for implementation many email clients such as Outlook may refuse to send it. To get around this, create the file with a regular name like "test.htaccess", and then rename it in an FTP client right before uploading


3. Paste the following code into the site's .htaccess file:
   Redirect 301 / http://www.newdomain.com/


4. Upload the file into the root directory of the site’s hosting account.
   Once the .htaccess file has been uploaded, it should take effect within 24 hours or less. If it does not, check with the hosting company or administrator to make sure that the ModRewrite module is enabled for the site's hosting account.

For special cases and other server configurations, there are multiple sites online which are server specific and give more instructions about how to do 301 redirects. As we stated above, 301 redirects should be done carefully, and if the site fails to operate after an HTACESS file is uploaded or change, you should revert back to the old code until a fix can be made.

How to verify a 301 redirect

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.