« Description Tag Optimization — Beginning SEO Podcast by Lee Odden » 22 May 2007

Today I consulted on an issue that comes up all the time, but I don’t think I have ever blogged about it. 301 Redirects. More specifically, in reference to moving a site to a new domain name.

For whatever reason, you want to change the domain name of the site, but need to keep the link juice, traffic from bookmarks, and the rankings gained by the old domain name. The way to do this is with the use of a 301 redirect. This is a method used in the .htaccess file in the root directory of your website. A 301 redirect tells a visiting browser (and therefore search engines), that “the site has moved forevers and evers, and it is now here.”

In reference to the ranking and link juice, the amount of time for recuperation can vary. I’ve experienced as little as a week, and as long as 2 months. Mind your SE’s and O’s and you should be fine.

This is the only acceptable way of redirecting in the eyes of a search engine. I say “acceptable” because, skilled black hatters aside, the search engines will not play well with other methods, and will likely penalize or drop the site all together with the use of other methods.

So, how do we implement a 301 redirect correctly? Like so:

• Navigate to your website’s root directory (this is normally where your index file is)
• Look for a file called .htaccess (notice that there is no extension)
• If there isn’t one, open notepad, and make one (again, be mindful that there is no extension)
• In the .htaccess file, write this:

Redirect 301 /old.com http://www.newsite.com

Notice we are saying Redirect of a 301 type from the /old.com to http://www.newsite.com. Pretty simple, huh? Make sure of a few things. First, that you are not including the whole URL in the first part, but are in the second; also, that you are including a single space between the old site and new site.

Well, because that was so simply and quickly explained, I would like to explore a few reasons why we would want to do this.

One of the most common these days (the days of social and viral marketing) is that you made some marketing efforts that will bring much to a domain in the way of hits, diggs, and then links. Well, eventually that marketing effort will pass, and the need for that page will likely fade. So why not take advantage of all those links you got, and send them to another of your pages?

Maybe you decided that the domain name you had before didn’t mesh well with your company name, or the domain name you have been waiting to become available has finally done so. Pick up the new domain name, and 301 redirect it to the old (or vice versa if you are wanting to get that one ranked).

I also want to discuss a few of the methods that are not accepted by the search engines.

You can make use of a “meta redirect,” by placing the necessarry code in the head of your site. Doing so allows you to set the amount of time before the browser redirects to the new page. This will provide the browser with the 200 OK status on both of the pages. This causes a problem because the search engine will want to index both of those pages. You could (if you were so inclined) setup a whole bunch of text and meta for whatever terms you wanted for the benefit of a search engine, and direct the “real” visitor to the page you want. As such, this method will get the/both sites penalized in most cases.

You can do the “sneaky javascript” thing, but as you can see from that link (it’s an old method, obviously) it’s a bad idea. There are a few updated methods, but I’m not too well versed in those areas. You think SEO is tricky? Try being a skilled Black Hat; Now that’s hard work.

I hope this helps with any questions regarding 301 redirects. If you have anymore, please feel free to comment or let me know.

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