So you have redesigned and re-architected an existing site and now we’re going to make the new site go live. If you want to keep the same domain name (e.g. mydomain.com goes to mydomain.com), but the individual pages will be in a different location – perhaps using a CMS system so that the individual page URL’s will change.

As you all know, from an SEO standpoint, changing over to a new site can drastically impact your page ranking with search engines; i.e. the search engines have indexed your old site and then you turn on the new site and suddenly *your traffic falls off completely.*

Our current approach is to use 301-Redirects on a selected set of pages on the old site.

Effectively the 301 Redirects tell the search engine bots that the page they are trying to reach has changed and redirects them to that new page. Apparently a 301-Redirect is very bot-friendly and will help accelerate the changeover in the search engine indexes AND (most importantly) page rankings and traffic will remain while that is all happening.

Try this tool to check if your web site has a URL redirect working correctly:

Search Engine Friendly Redirect Check Enter the URL whose Redirect you want to check

Check out other web site tools at webconfs.com – 301 Redirect

301 redirect is the most efficient and Search Engine Friendly method for webpage redirection. It’s not that hard to implement and it should preserve your search engine rankings for that particular page. If you have to change file names or move pages around, it’s the safest option. The code “301″ is interpreted as “moved permanently”.

You can Test your redirection with Search Engine Friendly Redirect Checker

Below are a Couple of methods to implement URL Redirection

IIS Redirect

• In internet services manager, right click on the file or folder you wish to redirect
• Select the radio titled “a redirection to a URL”.
• Enter the redirection page
• Check “The exact url entered above” and the “A permanent redirection for this resource”
• Click on ‘Apply’

Redirect in ColdFusion

<.cfheader statuscode=”301″ statustext=”Moved permanently”>
<.cfheader name=”Location” value=”http://www.new-url.com”>

Redirect in PHP

<?
Header( “HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently” );
Header( “Location: http://www.new-url.com” );
?>

Redirect in ASP

<%@ Language=VBScript %>
<%
Response.Status=”301 Moved Permanently” Response.AddHeader “Location”, ” http://www.new-url.com”
>

Redirect in ASP .NET

<script runat=”server”>
private void Page_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
Response.Status = “301 Moved Permanently”;
Response.AddHeader(“Location”,”http://www.new-url.com”);
}
</script>

Redirect Old domain to New domain (htaccess redirect)

Create a .htaccess file with the below code, it will ensure that all your directories and pages of your old domain will get correctly redirected to your new domain. The .htaccess file needs to be placed in the root directory of your old website (i.e the same directory where your index file is placed)

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Please REPLACE www.newdomain.com in the above code with your actual domain name.

In addition to the redirect I would suggest that you contact every backlinking site to modify their backlink to point to your new website.

Note* This .htaccess method of redirection works ONLY on Linux servers having the Apache Mod-Rewrite moduled enabled.

Redirect to www (htaccess redirect)

Create a .htaccess file with the below code, it will ensure that all requests coming in to domain.com will get redirected to www.domain.com
The .htaccess file needs to be placed in the root directory of your old website (i.e the same directory where your index file is placed)

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^domain.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

Please REPLACE domain.com and www.newdomain.com with your actual domain name.

Note* This .htaccess method of redirection works ONLY on Linux servers having the Apache Mod-Rewrite moduled enabled.