301 Redirects

A 301 redirect is the most efficient and Search Engine Friendly method for webpage redirection. It’s not that hard to implement and it can 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” mean the page has “moved permanently”.

Here are some examples;

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’

ColdFusion Redirect

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

PHP Redirect

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

ASP Redirect

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

ASP .NET Redirect

JSP (Java) Redirect

<%
response.setStatus(301);
response.setHeader( “Location”, “http://www.NEW-URL-HERE.com/” );
response.setHeader( “Connection”, “close” );
%>

CGI PERL Redirect

$q = new CGI;
print $q->redirect(“http://www.NEW-URL-HERE.com/”);

Ruby on Rails Redirect

def old_action
headers[“Status”] = “301 Moved Permanently”
redirect_to “http://www.NEW-URL-HERE.com/”
end

Redirect Old domain to New domain using 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.NEW-URL-HERE.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Please REPLACE www.NEW-URL-HERE.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 module enabled.

Redirect to www using 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.NEW-URL-HERE.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.NEW-URL-HERE.com with your actual domain name.