Search
engines want to see a permanent redirection, not a temporary one, which is why 301
Moved Permanently remains the safest means of directing robots to new locations.
There are several easy techniques for handling redirection. For websites running on the
Apache server platform, setting up redirects is a simple matter of editing the .htaccess
file.
The .htaccess file sits in the root directory of the site.2 It is capable of controlling many
aspects of a website, from hiding directories to setting up extension rewriting commands
to banning specific referring URLs. It also enables redirects. To implement a 301 redirect
using an .htaccess file, simply open the file in a text editor and add the following line,
editing the paths to match your site:
Redirect 301 /old/page.html /new/page/is/here.html
This simple line instructs any incoming user agent (such as a browser or search engine
spider) to bypass /old/page.html and skip right over to /new/page/is/here.html, the
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1. For a complete list of response codes, see RFC 2616 in the HTTP spec, found here: www.w3.org/
Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.
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