A 301 Redirect Guide for the Clueless!

301 redirects are commands that you enter into your website's "htaccess" file. This file sits in your root directory, and is accessed before your website loads. That means that any commands in your htaccess file will trigger before your site pops up when someone visits it. You can edit your existing htaccess by simply using a text editor like Notepad.

The 301 redirects being reviewed in this tutorial are strictly for .htaccess file redirects and the Apache web server with the function mod rewrite turned on (this is on by default).

In each example, you'll see a shaded gray line with a command in it. You can simply copy that command and paste it into your htaccess file, under the line "RewriteEngine on" (this is mandatory). If "RewriteEngine on" doesn't exist in your htaccess file, simply type it in yourself.

Here's the most simple scenario: 301 redirecting an old page to an existing page. In this case, we'll redirect "www.mysite.com/old.html" to "www.mysite.com/new.html":

Redirect 301 /old.html http://www.mysite.com/new.html

The first URL is the one being directed, and the second URL is the one it is being redirected to. Did you notice that the first link only requires you to type out the page, while the second link has the entire URL? This is the proper syntax, and it must be typed this way.

This also works for redirecting pages that have no extension, such as .html or .php - typically the kinds of pages you'll get when you use a content management system like Joomla or Wordpress. Using the above example, let's assume those pages have no ".html" after them. This is how we'd do the 301 redirect:

Redirect 301 /old http://www.mysite.com/new

Note that there is no "/" after the page name in that re-direct...we'll learn why, later!

Every single website you create should use this particular one! Here, we'll re-direct the non-www version of your website (such as mysite.com) to the www version of your website (such as www.mysite.com).

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mysite.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.mysite.com/$1 [R=301,L]

In doing so, you're eliminating search engine issues that arise from having "two versions" of a website, which also taint analytics results.

Let's say you regretted naming a folder on your website, and wanted to change it. For example, you don't like "mysite.com/newcars/" and you wish had named it "mysite.com/cars/," because it's shorter and simpler. However, you want all of the pages in that folder to still work so that they also adapt to the new "/cars/" folder. This is what you'd use:

redirect 301 /newcars/ http://www.mysite.com/cars/

You can perform this redirect for deeper level folders, too. So, say you want the folder "mysite.com/cars/classic/" to move over to "/cars/all/classic/." You'd use this:

redirect 301 /cars/classic/ http://www.mysite.com/cars/all/classic/

Unlike previous examples in this tutorial which involved redirecting from one page to another, please note that you'll have to leave the "/" after folder names in a folder-to-folder redirect. That's because the trailing forwardslash denotes a "folder."

For example, this is a page: "mysite.com/test" and this is a folder: "mysite.com/test/"

Unlike the previous lesson, let's say that I have a folder on my site: "mysite.com/cars," and I'm getting rid of that entire folder and all of the pages within it, such as "/cars/ford.html," "/cars/toyota.html," "/cars/acura.html" and several dozen others. Since I'm no longer using those HTML pages, I'll want that entire folder and its contents to move to "mysite.com/products"

redirectMatch 301 ^/cars/ http://www.mysite.com/products/

Similarly, say that you want to redirect an entire folder and all of its contents to a single HTML page, such as "mysite.com/cars" and all of its individual pages over to the single page "mysite.com/things/stuff.html"

redirectMatch 301 ^/cars/ http://www.mysite.com/things/stuff.html

Sometimes, a website needs to be moved over to a new domain name for whatever reason. It's a very simple thing to do, thankfully! Just copy and paste the code below (and absolutely nothing else), and make it be the sole contents of your htaccess file:

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

There are two important things to note about this. For starters, this is somewhat of a "lazy" way to move a website. You're not moving the individual folders or pages over to their new counterparts on a new website; instead, you're just moving everything over to the home page of the new site. The alternative is to write a 301 redirect command for every single folder or page, if you really need to retain each page's search engine ranking.

Secondly, when you 301 redirect an old domain to a new one, be aware that you'll have to keep paying for the annual domain renewal and server account of the old domain name. Make it a point to change all of the backlinks that were pointing to the old domain, so that they point over to the new one. Once all backlinks are changed, you can consider dropping the old domain (unless it's a good domain that gets decent type-in traffic).

To see if your 301 redirect worked, simply visit the page. No refresh is needed, since it's a server-side file that triggers immediately before the page elements start loading. Alternately, there are numerous "301 redirect check" websites out there on search engines that will run a diagnostic for you. You'll always want to manually check and see if it worked! An unnoticed redirect issue can lead to tragedy, including lost rankings!