Meta refreshes - what is the best way to fix them?

I need to keep my redirects without being penalized.

[Drastic]

I have several redirects (using the meta refresh tag) on my domain. Some are from moving site pages, or redirecting removed pages to my home page. Some were from direct marketing that just went through the redirect for tracking purposes. (The visitor never saw the site.) Now, they ALL point to some page on my site. Some of these still get several visitors per day, but I need to keep from being penalized. Should I:

1) Use the robots "noindex" exclusion? (Will this work without penalizing me on any engine?)

2) Use a javascript OnLoad redirect? (I could lose some visitors with JS disabled, but could show a clickable link to them)

3) Remove the redirect completely showing only clickable links? (I prefer not to do this, as it will definitely cause some traffic loss, but will do if needed to prevent being penalized.)

Or should I do 1&2 or 1&3?

Thanks for your help!

[rcjordan]

rather than a redirect, consider a frameset using the old url (when possible). See this earlier thread: [webmasterworld.com]

If you have no alternative, I'd use the Onload js.

[grnidone]

Heck of a nick "Drastic"

Welcome to the forums!

-G

[drbill]

Drastic,

I would go with RC on the Frames but have never been big on JS.

These pages are they in different dir's if so what I use seems seemless. Htaccess is what I would use and it is only for traffic that is moving now, to get them to where they have to go. In the long run it will get you penalized in the engines Trust me I know :(

That was on hard mistake.

[Brett_Tabke]

I would go htaccess too. Inktomi and Alta don't seem to mind at all. Google will pick up the http forward with no trouble.

[Diane]

I have heard that when you use a frameset, there is another tag that needs to be added in order for the spider to index your site. Is this true? If so, what is the tag?
Thank you!

[rcjordan]

Diane, on the frameset page, many SE's will index the content in the <NOFRAMES> </NOFRAMES> tag.

[Diane]

Thank you, RC! That was an airhead moment! (DUH!) ;-)

[rcjordan]

>airhead moment!

We all have 'em... except I usually blame it on the lack of coffee (a common dodge among this group, I might add).

I have had extremely good luck w/ the noframes tag content being indexed. Google in particular.

[Drastic]

Thanks everyone for the help, and for the welcome!

To clarify what I am working with:

approximately 25 files, all in the root dir.
Some get less than 5 hits per month, some more than 30 per day.
I don't want them to be indexed further, some of them already have been. I want these pages to die, but keep the traffic until it does. (just the page redirect, not any SE listings)

I am tempted to go the JS route, as I familiar with it. I don't have any experience with frames or working with .htaccess, but I feel sure I could pick this up easily, and would probably need the skills again later.

My main objective (in addition to keeping the current traffic) is to not be penalized by the SEs.

I would prefer not using frames, for bookmarking reasons.

drbill, do you mean the .htaccess route will hurt me in the long run?

Will JS hurt me in any way in the long run? (anyone?)

Also, should I resub the pages with the "noindex" exclusion to remove the ones that are indexed? The traffic is not coming from these indexed pages, but from (mostly) other marketing I did in the past. (mostly classified ads that are their own page, the classified ad page got a good SE listing and that is sending traffic to the redirect.)

Thanks for all the valuable input!!! :)