A 301 Redirect to Save Your Existing Google Juice

Maybe you read a previous post that talked about the 301 Redirect. Or maybe you overheard some people talking about how she used a 301 redirect to improve SEO. Or maybe you are just reading this entry! You might not know what a 301 Redirect is. Search no more!

A 301 redirect is the most efficient and search engine friendly way to automatically forward on a webpage to a new page. This is known as Redirection. The good thing is that it is relatively painless, easy to do, and it will hold onto your search engine rankings for that page. When you need to move posts and pages around, it is your safest option.

If you need to change the URL of a page as it is shown in search engine results, it is recommended that you use a server-side 301 redirect. This is the best way to ensure that users and search engines are directed to the correct page. Technically, the 301 status code means that a page has permanently moved to a new location.

You may be thinking, “When should I use this 301 Redirect?”. An excellent question! These are good to use in the following cases:

• Your website is accessed through different website addresses such as:
• If this is the case, choose one of those URLs as your preferred address. You can use 301 redirects to send your visitors from the other addresses to your preferred address.
• You can also use a 301 redirect if you move you website to a new name. You can then have all you visitors that go to your old site automatically sent to the new site.

• • http://www.yoursite.com,
  • http://yoursite.com,
  • http://yoursite.com/blog or,
  • http://blog.yoursite.com

If you would like to know HOW to do a 301 redirect, just let me know – leave a comment below.

(By the way, if you are going to change the webpage of a post, that is a 307 redirect! Want info on that? Yup… leave a comment!)