In this article I will discuss techniques of redirecting the page, what works and what to avoid.

What is page redirection and why would you use?

Let's say you rename a page on your website, for any reason. Perhaps it decided to renew the agreement full name, perhaps to restructure your site and the need to move the pages in different folders, or just realized that you are missing valuable keywords.

We will elaborate a bit on the question of keywords as part of its search engine ranking success.

Let's say that page is customized USB drives and named page1.htm. After reading some of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) articles and found out that some search engines use the words in the file name as search keywords. The next time you do a Google search, take a look at the results of the majority, have the words in the file name (in the URL section) in bold, which denotes a keyword match. USB drives its website certainly will benefit from something called as custom_usb_drives.htm place.

Now that has changed the name of the page you just created a symphony of problems for you, its users and its position in search engines.

Linking the issues:

You have to point every link on your site to name the new page. If your site is small, there should be a great thing, but if your site is great, they inevitably make mistakes, especially forget a link or two. This will result in visitors getting the dreaded "404 page not found" error when clicking on your links, robots (also known as crawlers or spiders) to avoid, etc. Also, if you rely heavily on visitors from the search engines, then again, people will have a "404 page not found error."

Let's use the example above, for a long time was his page1.htm indexed by major search engines. If someone writes "Custom USB devices" in a search engine box, your page appears in the first screen of search results. That's great, if someone clicks on the link, spoke page1.htm not custom_usb_drives.htm, because the first page that the search engine index. It will take time, sometimes months, before the search engines update their indexes with the name of your new page.

Lost Page Rank (PR) issues:

Google has developed a proprietary algorithm that assigns a Page Rank (PR) for all pages on the web. PR is a number from 1 to 10 (10 being the ideal) and should be a representation of the useful and popular is a particular page. PR is influenced by many factors, one of the most crucial link popularity. Link popularity is a representation of the amount of "quality" or "relevant" sites link to the page. Without going into too much detail, it is increasingly difficult and time consuming to achieve a high PR for your pages, especially if you have a web site truly unique, an exceptional and highly sought after content. If there are more than a commercial site, in a competitive market (such as selling custom branded USB drives, as in our example), then it takes much time and work hard to build good public relations page.

When you rename a page and discard the old page, also ruled out the PR of the page. Name your page will look like a completely new page with 0 PR.

What is the solution?

I'll start by listing some of the methods used by the uninitiated.

Not recommended solution 1: Duplicate content.

The first thing that probably comes to mind is: well, why can not duplicate the page and let nature take its course. In other words, you have two identical pages, one with a name and page1.htm custom_usb_drives. htm. This gives you time to update all links and search engines eventually index the new page.

This solution is not viable because search engines will penalize bad enough, "thought" they're trying to defraud them by the "duplicate content" technique.

Not recommended solution 2: Custom error message.

You could create a custom error page. However, you will lose ranking on the search update next to the file seem to be nonexistent. As mentioned above, may be a while before the page with the new name will be indexed and will appear in searches of people. In addition, website visitors, are frustrated by the fact that we now have to dig through their website to find the desired information.

Not recommended solution 3: A Meta HTML redirect.

You could implement a call to load a page Meta blank and you have the name of the old page (in our example, page 1. Htm) pointing to the new page. The redirection can be immediate or delayed by a predetermined amount of time. The delayed redirect has the advantage that it can put an additional message such as "Please note that the page you are looking for location changed ... .. etc, etc. .... will be automatically redirected to new location "

In the past, this was probably the most used.

Without going into the mechanics of the Meta redirect, which is basically a statement declaring the META tags to your header section, we know that there are also Java Script techniques that achieve similar results.

What's bad is that it is a technique often used by spammers to trick search engines and should be avoided, unless the page is in a section of your site that is not indexed (also known like spiders or track). the search engine spammers create a page that is optimized for certain keywords and phrases - usually has no real content. The page is collected by some search engines, but when a user clicks on the search engine entry, they are redirected to another site, often unrelated. Most search engines have filters to detect this. Using this type of scam search to finally see a site banned or penalized by major players like Google.

The strategy should refocus - 301 Redirect

A 301 is the most efficient robot, kind visitor, (spiders, caterpillars) and the solution search engine friendly web sites around that are hosted on Apache servers. If you are unsure, ask your hosting provider.

A 301 is just a set of commands written to the file. Htaccess.

When a visitor (whether human or robot) requests a web page by any means, checks a web server htaccess file .. Himhtaccess file contains specific instructions for certain requests, including security, redirection issues and the handling of certain errors.

The code "301" is interpreted as "moved permanently". After the code, the URL of the page is missing or renamed noted, followed by a space, then followed by the new location or file name.

First, you must find the file. Htaccess in the root directory of all your web pages are stored. If no file. Htaccess there, you can create one with Notepad or similar application. Make sure when the name of the file that you remember to put the "." at the beginning of the file name. This file has no extension of the tail.

Some hosting providers offer forwarding services through its "control panel", so no need to do low-level changes in the htaccess. Own. Instead, provide an easy to use for this. Check with your hosting provider to see what is the best way to make a 301 is in its case. I'll keep the article with the barebones solution.

If a htaccess file. Existing lines with this code, be very careful not to change any existing line unless you are familiar with the file functions.

Scroll down past all the existing code, leave a line space, then create a new line that follows this example:

Redirect 301 / http://www.you.com/folder/custom_usb_drives.htm folder/page1.htm

It's as easy as that. Save the file and upload it back to your site and try typing in the old page address has changed. You should be instantly and seamlessly transported to the new location.

Note: Be sure not to add "http: / / "To the first part of the statement - just put the path from the top of your site to this page. Also be sure to leave a space 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 name)

The same format applies not only to files by name, but the files are moved to a different place.

The 301 redirect is the safest way to preserve your rankings. In the following index (tracking, tracing), the search engine robot to obey the rule indicated in the file. Htaccess and index the name of the new page each time a link or its internal database tries to access the old page. In the next update (again, this may take months), the old file name and path will be dropped and replaced by a new one. Sometimes you may see alternating old / new file names during the transition, along with some possible fluctuations in rankings as things settle. Do not panic, this is normal.

What if your site is hosted on a Microsoft IIS server instead?

If you have access to the server, do the following: In Internet Services Manager, right click on the file or folder you want to redirect. Select the radio titled "a redirection to a URL." Enter the redirection page Check "The exact URL entered above" and "A permanent redirection for this resource." Click "OK."

If you do not have access to the server, ask your host to point in the right direction.

In conclusion, the best and most transparent way (for both human users and robotic) to rename and move files on your website, while preserving their ranks search engine is the 301 redirect.