8/9/2019 Using Redirect Pages in Your SEO Strategy

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Using Redirect Pages In Your SEO Strategy

Whether youre changing your entire site or simply retiring outdated or unneeded pages, the

importance of choosing the correct redirect strategy shouldnt be underestimated. Imagine youve

just completed a costly overhaul of your web site. Youve kept some sections the same but have also

opted to change a few file names, add a number of new pages and delete a handful of products,

catalogues and old news items. Your new site is fresh, relevant and completely up to date. While you

may be happy with the new look, this is potentially the most dangerous time for your fledging new

design as you risk losing both site visitors and time spent on search engine optimization and web site

rankings if the correct redirects havent been implemented.

The majority of sites will harvest their traffic from search engines. So, when visitors find an older

page listed in the search engine results and try to visit that destination URL only to find its no longer

there, what happens? The visitor (potential clients, returning clients and search engines) receive a

404 File Not Found error message.Suddenly your stock with that potential client plummets as they

are forced to go back to the search engine and try another listing or manually type in the home page

URL based on the address of the missing page.

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redirect 301 /oldsite/oldpage.htm http://www.mynewsite.com/newpage.htm . The file is then

saved and uploaded to the server. When the search engine spider next visits the site and accesses

the file, it is educated as to the new site structure and which new page replaces which old page.

Do you need a temporary redirect? If so, try a 302 redirect page. This is a temporary solution to shift

traffic to a specific new area for a short period of time. It may be used for example if you have a

seasonal micro-site only used for the Christmas holiday period; rather than changing your entire site,you would simply redirect incoming traffic to the festive themed micro site using the 302 redirect.

When the holidays are over, removing the 302 redirect will channel users straight back through to

the main site. Using the 302 code tells the search engines that the move is only temporary and

instructs them not to update their index records.