In this post I want to talk about page redirection, what you can and can not do.
What Page Redirection is?
Let’s assume you just rename a single page upon your web, for any reason. Maybe you chose to change your whole naming rules of your page files, maybe you chose to re-structure your web and want to relocate pages to another folders/directories, or maybe you now recognized that you’re dropping worthy keywords.
Let’s refine a little on the keywords subject, because it is fundamental for your SE top-ranking success.
Let’s assume the page at issue is about premium wordpress theme and you called it page1.php. Then you just read a few SEO posts and you discovered that a few SEs utilise keywords in the real filename as search keywords. Next time you do Googling, have a look at the page showing search results, most of them will have keywords in the real filename printed in bold font, referring a keyword match. Now your premium wordpress theme page will unquestionably profit if called something alike premium-wordpress-theme.php.
Dead Link Issue
You must direct all hyperlink on your web to brand-new pagename. If you have small web, it should be easy, but if you have big web, you will inescapably make mistakes, primarily leaving one or two hyperlink. That mistake will lead in visitors to “not found” error page whenever they click on your hyperlinks, robots hate you, etc. Besides, if you’re heavily trusting on traffic from SEs, then, people will get a “not found” page.
Let’s exercise the former case, your page1.php has been indexed by Google for a long time. If somebody queries “premium wordpress theme” in a SE textbox, your web page turns up on the 1st search results page. That is wonderful, only when somebody clicks on the hyperlink, they’ll be directed to page1.php not to not to premium-wordpress-theme.php, since the 1st page is the page in the SE’s index database. It will need time, occasionally months, prior to SEs renew their indexes.
Page Rank Loss Issues:
Google formulated a patented algorithm that designed to assigns a Rank to each page on the internet. Page rank is denoted by number between 1 and 10 (10 is the best) and is destined to measure usefulness and popularity a particular page. Page rank is shaped by a lot of elements, one of the critical ones is Link Popularity. Link Popularity is a measurement of how many relevant or “quality” sites link to your page. Without getting in detail, now it is more and more hard and long time to reach a high page rank for your web pages, particularly if you do not have unique site with special and extremely desired content. If you’re just running a commercial web, in this competing marketplace (for instance selling premium wordpress, as in our case), then it needs some time and heavy work to make a high page page rank.
Once you rename a file name (page name) and dispose the old one, you also dispose the page rank of the web page you disposed. Your new or moved page will be consideredweb as a completely brand new page, with zeor pagerank.
How to Not Loose Page Rank?
I’ll begin by enumerating few of the wrong techniques that you must avoid.
Non recommended solution 1: Duplicate The Post.
Primary thing that likely comes in your brain is: let’s replicate the page. Put differently, you’ll have 2 identical pages, one page named page1.php and the other named premium-wordpress-theme.php. This grants you time to update every hyperlinks and the SEs will sooner or later index the fresh page.
This answer isn’t practicable because SEs will punish you badly, SE will considering that you’re trying to spam them by duplicating content.
Not recommended answer 2: Custom 404 Error Page.
You could make a custom 404 error page. Nevertheless, you’ll miss page rank on the succeeding SE update since the file will look to be vanished. As talked about preceding, it could be few time prior to new page name will be indexed and will show up in search result page. Besides, your visitors will surely be disappointed by being force to delve through your web to discover the wanted info.
Not recommended answer 3: Meta Refresh Redirect.
You also could apply meta refresh in customized page called old page name (in our case, page1.php) that directs to the new one. The redirect can be fast, or postponed by some seconds. The postponed one has the reward that you are able to post an additional message.
In the old time, this was likely the most exploited technique.
Without entering the mechanics of the Meta refresh redirect, which is essentially a META tag you add to your head section, there are also JavaScript methods that accomplish same results.
This method is very risky since this method used frequently by spammers to spam SEs and it had better be kept off, unless it is not indexed. SE spammers make a page that’s optimised for some keywords – it typically has no actual info. And then, the page is crawled by some SEs, but when someone clicks on the SE links, they are forced to redirect to different site, usually unrelated site. Most SEs have algorithm to discover this. Using this SE trick will make a site finally banished or punished by major SEs.
The Most Recommended – Moved Permanently 301 Redirection
A moved permanently 301 redirect is the most effective, SEs and visitor friendly solution for web hosted on Apache. A 301 redirect is merely a set of expression in .htaccess file. When a visitor open a page, your web server look for a .htaccess file. The file comprises precise commands for certain requests, including how to address errors, redirection and security.
The code “301″ means is “moved permanently”. Subsequently the code, the URL of the missing or renamed page is written, followed by a space, then followed by the new URL.
Foremost, you will need to find the .htaccess file in the root directoryof where all your web pages are stored. If there is no .htaccess file there, you can make one with text editor. Be sure to put the dot at the start of the file name. This file has no extension.
A few hosting providers offer redirect services through their “control panels”, therefore you do not have to do changes on the .htaccess file itself. Rather, they put up a easy interface for this. Check with your hosting provider to see what the optimal way to perform a 301 redirect is in your case. I will continue the article with the barebones solution.
The 301 redirect is the best way to maintain your rankings. On the next crawling, the SE robot will obey the rule suggested in your .htaccess file and index the new page name everytime a hyperlink or its internal database tries to access the old page. In the future update, the old file name and path will be discharged and substituted with the new one. Occasionally you may look interchanging old/new file names during the conversion time period, along with some possible fluctuations in rankings. Do not panic, this is normal.
Finally, the finest way to rename and move files on your web site, while keeping your SE ranks is the moved permanently redirect.
Well, organic SEO is the way to do it because you won’t get banned by major search engine.*~”