Moved pages

How to capture Google traffic but not get dumped for Meta refresh

[mikevanerp]

I've got a problem in that I've recently renamed some pages on my site as part of a big restructure.

I don't want to loose any current Google traffic before the next update as I have many position 1 keywords.

My question is, do I bite the bullet and loose Google traffic to avoid being hit by any meta refresh penalty until the next update, or can I put meta-refresh pages in place of the old pages, pointing to the new page?

I don't care about the old pages getting dumped - in fact I want that to happen, as I'm hoping the new pages should get well ranked. I really don't want to get any major impact on my entire site, if that comes with a meta refresh based penalty.

[Marcia]

mike, why don't you use a 301 permanent redirect with .htaccess? That works best and it's risk-free.

[egomaniac]

301 redirect in your .htaccess file is the way to go. I just changed the urls on about 25 pages, and Google indexed and found them all. Also, Since the other SEs aren't as current on their indexing, the old link is automatically redirected to the new pages. It works well.

[mikevanerp]

Unfortunately I'm with the dreaded UK2.net, so I don't have the option of using .htaccess

So, given that, which option do you choose now? (According to Relax, I get about 8% of my traffic from search engines)

I don't want to take the hit either way, but it doesn't matter that much because this is only a hobby site for me and doesn't make any money. In fact I'm not a professional web designer by any means, as my expertise is in the guts of NT server, automation, and cmdline scripting.

[budterm]

Marcia, egomaniac -

301 permanent redirect in your .htaccess? Help me out here...

I know what is .htaccess. I know what is 301 redirect (sent by the server as a header back to the browser). I dont know the specifics of how to implement what you are saying...

Any help will be appreciated!

[annej]

Is there really a meta refresh penalty? I got worried when I read this and went to delete a couple of meta refresh pages that I've left up because they were so many outside links to them. Interestingly one had a pr6. I took off the meta refresh but left the link. Is that safe?

Anne

[chiyo]

We have used meta refresh with a value of 10 (10 seconds, just to be conservative) when we have changed the url of page. We have done quite a few recently when we needed to use php scripts on some pages so just had to change the extension from htm to php. We considered using htaccess to direct the server toc onsider all pages as PHP, but given the (admittedly slight) slower load times, and the fairly drastic global change, we decided to just changing single pages.

We would like to use 301 redirects as suggested here. My question is this - can you do this for individual pages rather than whole directories. At my begginner level understanding of htaccess, you can use directions there that affect the whole directory, eg: passwords, no directory listings, default directory extension etc: but not for individual pages.

Is my assumption wrong (quote possible!) and if so how can i go about redirecting individual pages with a 302 through htaccess? Thanks for your help.

[ciml]

Chiyo, if you put the .htaccess file in your document root then you should be able to rewrite any URL below. Alternatively put it straight into httpd.conf if you have access to it.

RewriteRule ^/somepath/somepage.html [example.com...] [L,R=301]

I suggest using R=301 instead of R in the directive. 301 (Moved Permenantly) seems to give you more chance of getting the PageRank benefit, and Google suggest it in their help pages.

[chiyo]

Thanks a lot ciml. Just what i was looking for.

[budterm]

ciml, chiyo -

OK, I guess you guys are talking in terms of Mod Rewrite in the .htaccess file... which I have not yet attempted.

I have an entire domain that I am closing but want to transfer the Google benefits to a new domain.

My thought was to use .htaccess to set the default page for the old domain to a CGI script that would send back a 301 header, and then a Location header for the new domain.

This technique correctly sends the browser to the new domain. But does it properly notify the browser (i.e. Googlebot) so as to not incur a ban or penalty?

[egomaniac]

budterm,

The 301 redirect is really simple. Just add a line like this into your .htaccess file for every individual url that you have changed:

Redirect 301 /oldpage.htm [mydomain.com...]

chiyo,

You can use 301 or 302 redirects for individual pages - it use is not limited to directories. For 302, just change the above line to 302.

[buckworks]

A couple of days ago I came across a helpful article about .htaccess redirects:

[opensourcepan.co.uk...]

I sometimes use redirects to make links for use in emails, usually when the original URL I want to send is a way-too-long affiliate link.

[nonprof webguy]

mikevanerp:

One option when you do not have an .htaccess file available is to use an error.asp page for 404s (when someone looks for one of the old pages) and include a little script there to redirect appropriately. You can set the status to "Moved Permanently."

Here's a little ASP/VB thingy I made for my error page that checks the query string to see which page the user was trying to find, then redirects them to the page's new address.

Note that if you put this code ABOVE the first bit of HTML, the server never sends (and the user never sees) your error page. They just get the correct page and can see the corrected url in the address box. Also, search engines may not clear out the old url from their indexes, since the old url is a successful hit. Anyone know how Goo9lebot and others deal with status codes?

' *********************************************** 
' * FIND OUT THE URL OF THE PAGE THE USER WANTS * 
' *********************************************** 
' 
Dim ErrorQueryString, SpecificOldUrl 
ErrorQueryString = Request.ServerVariables("QUERY_STRING") 
SpecificOldUrl = Mid(GetQueryString,5,Len(ErrorQueryString)-4) 
' 
' the Mid formula above starts at the 5th character 
' because the query string on my server is in the form of  
' the 3-digit status code, a semicolon, and then the url  
' the client requested. E.g.:  
'   404;http://www.sitename.com/blah_blah.htm 
' if your server records the query string differently, change 
' the numbers 5 (and 4) as appropriate. 
' 
' ********************************************** 
' * FOR EACH OLD PAGE URL, REDIRECT TO NEW URL * 
' ********************************************** 
' 
Select Case SpecificOldUrl 
Case "http://www.sitename.com/first_old_bad_page.asp":  
Response.Status "301 Moved permanently" 
Response.Redirect "http://www.sitename.com/good_new_pages/page1.asp 
Case "http://www.sitename.com/second_old_bad_page.asp":  
Response.Status "301 Moved permanently" 
Response.Redirect "http://www.sitename.com/good_new_pages/page2.asp 
End Select 

You can get more sophisticated, of course. I also look through my logs to see what the most common reasons people get the error page are, and have added script to this thingy to route them appropriately. I'm hoping some of the other folks on WebmasterWorld might be able to suggest improvements, too.

[budterm]

Thanks guys!

[sparrow]

Is 301 primarily for directory structure and 302 for pages?

If I want to do a external permanent redirect of [xyz.com...] to [xyz.com...] would I use;

Redirect 301 [xyz.com...] to [xyz.com...]

or

Redirect 302 [xyz.com...] to [xyz.com...]

[Dreamquick]

Sparrow;

Http status code 301 is "moved temporarily" which announces that the resource requested has been temporarily moved to a new location.

Since it is not permanent the browser / SE should continue to check the issuing page in future to see what the new location is.

Http status code 302 is "moved permenantly" which announces that the resource requested has been moved to a new location and that any references to the old location should be updated.

Hope that helps.

[sparrow]

Thanks dreamquick, it helps.

[NFFC]

It's the other way round;

301 = "moved permenantly" etc

[Marcia]

Straight from the horse's mouth - from the Apache.org site:

[httpd.apache.org...]

permanent
Returns a permanent redirect status (301) indicating that the resource has moved permanently.

temp
Returns a temporary redirect status (302). This is the default.
seeother

Returns a "See Other" status (303) indicating that the resource has been replaced.

gone
Returns a "Gone" status (410) indicating that the resource has been permanently removed. When this status is used the url argument should be omitted.

Example:

Redirect permanent /one [example.com...]
Redirect 303 /three [example.com...]

So it looks like if just Redirect is used without specifying, it'll return a 302 by default.

I've had an instance where 301 didn't work for a change within a site. Even though it was a permanent move, I had to use a 302 instead of 301. I left the old because INK still had it, unchanged.

[sparrow]

marcia,

let me ask you this, would it be better to redirect xvz.com to www.xvz.com or the other way around.

I was just on another thread and they were referring to dropping completely the www?

The other question is how will this effect my ranking.

Right now the site is ranking #1 in just about all the search engines for our keywords. I would really hate to lose that?

[Visit Thailand]

If you have a lot of renamed or moved pages will using the 301 slow the site/server down ?

[chris_f]

Can you use .htaccess WITHOUT apache? Can someone please sticky me the answer. Thanks.