How To Do 301 Redirects on Multiple Platforms

[SpyBoy]

301 redirect is the most efficient and Search Engine Friendly method for web page redirection. It’s simple to implement once you understand the process and it should preserve your search engine rankings for a particular page. If you have to change file names or move pages around, it’s the safest option. The code ‘301? is interpreted as ‘moved permanently’ and it informs the search engine that the page is no longer at this location, it is over here now. In other words, it is much like a forwarding address at the post office for your mail.

Below are methods to implement Safe URL Redirection
IIS Redirect

* In internet services manager, right click on the file or folder you wish to redirect
* Select the radio titled ‘a redirection to a URL’.
* Enter the redirection page
* Check ‘The exact url entered above’ and the ‘A permanent redirection for this resource’
* Click on ‘Apply’

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

<%
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’);
}
Redirect with htaccess

Create a .htaccess file (if does not exists) in your root directory.
Redirect permanent / http://www.new-url.com

[aliengeek]

An interesting quip about the 301 redirect.

It came with a lot of despair. It was, and kinda still is, the source of an annoying attack.

One of the reasons the 301 redirect was adopted so widely as an asset is because it lietarly popped up in everyones faces.

As web developers began to update their older sites to modern technology they noticed that simply changing from .html to .php made a big difference.
More often than not they made an upgrade to a CMS or some other type of system.
There are all kinds of ways to link back to your old content but if you went from a flat file structure to something like joomla, you could get a lot of penalties.

The fun part of the 301 redirect is that it is associated with the ranking system like PR. In practice if you want to link to old content or content that moved to a new domain perhaps you need to pass along the authority that goes with it. So the PR of the page being redirected to is automaticaly assigned to your 301 redirect. This will do NOTHING to enhance or change your rankings. The idea is that your keeping the authority. Big webmasters and sites like walmart that do a lot of 301 redirecting loved it.

One instance of fun people were having was getting a page indexed then doing a 301 redirect to a target page. It involved proxies and a lot more I'm sure.
I didn't get it at first but it seems briliant now. They could knock someone out of a listing by creating a bunch of duplicate content. The web site that was indexed never got a boost or anything but it did exist in the index and it was using a 301 redirect to a web page. Google's own rules said pass the authority.

In this case authority means nothing to the human visitors. I seriously doubt they even GOT human traffic. The authority is in the way the search engine is going to treat the process. To google that means whatever page the 301 is going to is a permanant part of that content. Even though they do not own the domains (the target) they are the content source usually and getting dinged by google is like a driving exam. As soon as you start getting marks against you your done.

Obviously Google has done a lot of work to fix this. Search engines that model them may not have.

I would think this would take a LOT of domains to do right. Like several thousand.