As a web designer I spend a fair amount of time visiting other sites either for inspiration or to learn what not to do.

Found this today and loved it so thought I’d post it.

Photography Art and Fun.

By Eldred Curwen

What is 301 redirect?

301 redirect is the best method to preserve your current search engine rankings when redirecting web pages or a web site. The code “301″ is interpreted as “moved permanently”. After the code, the URL of the missing or renamed page is noted, followed by a space, then followed by the new location or file name. You implement the 301 redirect by creating a .htaccess file.

What is a .htaccess file?

When a visitor/spider requests a web page, your web server checks for a .htaccess file. The .htaccess file contains specific instructions for certain requests, including security, redirection issues and how to handle certain errors.

How to implement the 301 Redirect

1. To create a .htaccess file, open notepad, name and save the file as .htaccess (there is no extension).

2. If you already have a .htaccess file on your server, download it to your desktop for editing.

3. Place this code in your .htaccess file:

redirect 301 /old/old.htm http://www.you.com/new.htm

4. If the .htaccess file already has lines of code in it, skip a line, then add the above code.

5. Save the .htaccess file

6. Upload this file to the root folder of your server.

7. Test it by typing in the old address to the page you’ve changed. You should be immediately taken to the new location.

Notes: Don’t add “http://www” to the first part of the statement – place the path from the top level of your site to the page. Also ensure that you leave a single space between these elements:

redirect 301 (the instruction that the page has moved)

/old/old.htm (the original folder path and file name)

http://www.you.com/new.htm (new path and file name)

When the search engines spider your site again they will follow the rule you have created in your .htaccess file. The search engine spider doesn’t actually read the .htaccess file, but recognizes the response from the server as valid.

During the next update, the old file name and path will be dropped and replaced with the new one. Sometimes you may see alternating old/new file names during the transition period, plus some fluctuations in rankings. According to Google it will take 6-8 weeks to see the changes reflected on your pages.

Other ways to implement the 301 redirect:

1. To redirect ALL files on your domain use this in your .htaccess file if you are on a unix web server:

redirectMatch 301 ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com
redirectMatch permanent ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com

You can also use one of these in your .htaccess file:

redirect 301 /index.html http://www.domain.com/index.html
redirect permanent /index.html http://www.domain.com/index.html
redirectpermanent /index.html http://www.domain.com/index.html

This will redirect “index.html” to another domain using a 301-Moved permanently redirect.

2. If you need to redirect http://mysite.com to http://www.mysite.com and you’ve got mod_rewrite enabled on your server you can put this in your .htaccess file:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example\.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [R=permanent,L]

or this:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Tip: Use your full URL (ie http://www.domain.com) when obtaining incoming links to your site. Also use your full URL for the internal linking of your site.

3. If you want to redirect your .htm pages to .php pages andd you’ve got mod_rewrite enabled on your server you can put this in your .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule (.*).htm$ /$1.php

4. If you wish to redirect your .html or .htm pages to .shtml pages because you are using Server Side Includes
(SSI) add this code to your .htaccess file:

AddType text/html .shtml
AddHandler server-parsed .shtml .html .htm
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Includes
DirectoryIndex index.shtml index.html

Frequently Asked Question:
What’s the difference in using a 301 redirect versus a meta redirect?

Meta Redirect
To send someone to a new page (or site) put this in the head of your document:

<meta http-equiv=”refresh” content=”10;
url=http://mynewsite.com/”>

Content=”10; tells the browser to wait 10 seconds before transfer, choose however long you would like, you can even choose 0 to give a smoother transition, but some (really old) browsers aren’t capable of using this so I’d suggest putting a link on that page to your new site for them.

With a meta redirect the page with the redirect issues a 200 OK status and some other mechanism moves the browser over to the new URL. With a 200 OK on both pages, the search engine wants to index both the start page and the target page – and that is a known spam method (set up 10,000 domains full of keywords for the search engines to index then meta redirect the “real visitor” after 0 or 1 seconds to the “real site” ) so using it gets you penalized.

The 301 redirect simply issues a Permanently Moved message in the HTTP header which tells the search engine to only index the target URL.

Conclusion: The safest way to redirect old web pages to the new pages or old web site to the new web site and keep the same search engine rankings is to use the 301 redirect. It will also pass on the page rank from your old site to your new site.

There is no use having a shop with no one in it! So how do you get people to visit your website?

The easiest way to find what you need on the internet today is to use a search engine such as Google. It follows, therefore, that the easiest way to get someone to your website is for your site to appear in Google, and most importantly, on the first page of the listings. Over 95% of people never visit the second page on Google!

It is easy but time consuming to promote your site in such a way as to move it up the Search Engine Returns (SERs) so that it eventually appears on the front page. There are two processes that have to be carried out.

The first is On Site Optimization and the second is Off Site Optimization which we will deal with in another article.

On Site Optimization.

1    Isolate a ‘keyword’ or ‘keyword phrase’ that accurately describes a page of your website. For example ‘Leica Digital Cameras’ might describe a page on your site about this specific type of Leica product. Try not to use just one word as they are difficult to be successful with.

2    Write about 400 words of visible text on the page. Make sure that you use the exact keyword phrase about four to six times in the body of the text.

3    Start the Article with an overall title exactly matching the Keyword Phrase and make it the largest heading size you can, i.e. H1.

4    If possible make the first line of the first paragraph begin with the phrase, but don’t destroy the sentence syntax.

5    Change the next occurrence of the phrase to bold emphasis.

6    Change the last occurrence of the phrase to italics.

7    If you have access to the html code (you’ll know if you do!) make sure of the following:

8    If you use images on your page. Make sure their tags also have the phrase in them.

The total of all these changes explains to the search engines that this page is all about your keyword phrase. But don’t just fill the page with keywords; the search engines are wise to such tricks. Use well constructed sentences that you would expect to read yourself.

The next article will explain how to show the search engines how important your page is and therefore why they should list you more highly in the SERs.

Useful sites: Google Analytics – Find out how many visitors are visiting. Google keyword Tool – Help with choosing a keyword phrase.