How to make Search Engine Friendly Redirects
Why bother with Search Engine Friendly Redirects?
Redirects are essential tools for anyone who works with SEO. How? you may ask.
Redirect for visitors
If you want to move a web page that is already indexed by Google, you want to…
- inform Google that the page is moved, and
- redirect visitors that click on your link in the search result page, so that they arrive at you page at its new location and not at your 404 error page.
Redirect so that link-juice is passed on to, and boosts your new url
If you have incoming links to a page that you want to move, you may of course contact the owner of the web page that is linking to you, and ask them to change the link so that it points to the new address of your page. But that can be quite time consuming, and while you are waiting for that change to actually happen, you really need to create a redirect on your side, so that the link-juice that comes from you incoming links, really end up boosting your position in Google’s search result page.
Search Engine Friendly or not?
There are many ways to make a redirect, but not all of them are search engine friendly. Even if the redirect you created redirects the visitor to the right place, it is not sure that the search engine follows it and counts it to your benefit.
A search engine friendly redirect should be of type 301, which means it sends the message “Moved permanently” to the search engine.
JavaScript or META-refresh should not be used for redirects – they are simply not search engine friendly.
This is how you make a 301 redirect:
With .htaccess
In a file named .htaccess placed in the root directory of your domain, write this line:
Redirect 301 /old/old-adress.html http://www.new-domain.se/new-address.html
So, after “Redirect 301” type a space and then the old address without domain name and tld, then add a space and the whole new address including http://
In some cases, if the above does not work, try this one:
RewriteRule ^old.html$ http://www.new-domain.se/new-address.html [R=301,L]
With a Joomla Extension
If your website is created with Joomla CMS and you figure that you will create redirects more than occationally, you may consider to install a redirect extension to make it easier to create redirects. Find some Joomla redirect extensions here.
With a WordPress Plugin
If your website is created with WordPress, you can easily create redirects with a plugin. Some great redirect plugins I have used:
- Quick Page/Post Redirect Plugin
- SEO Ultimate includes a redirect module, originaly intended to mask affiliate links, but it works well for SEO redirects too.
Once you have done your redrirect, check it with our Search Engine Friendly Redirect Checker tool
