A 301 Redirect Guide for the Clueless!

If you're changing the actual URL structure of a page on your site (for instance, mysite.com/cars123.html to mysite.com/cars456.html), and the original URL has page rank, a prominent position in search engine results and/or backlinks - you'll want to pass on its stature to the new page. The best way to do it is with a 301 redirect!

301 redirects are helpful because they're search engine friendly and the ultimate way to pass on credit from an old page to a new one. Even if you're looking to delete a page - use a 301 redirect to forward it to your home page, or the parent page it was under, so that any old hyperlinks out there won't point to a 404 - Not Found page. Don't worry about redirections - once you've added the 301 redirect statement, search engines will do the rest!

The 301 Redirects being covered in this tutorial are strictly for .htaccess file redirects, with the usage of the Apache web server with the function Mod Rewrite turned on. An .htaccess file is the configuration file of Apache, which lets you set configuration settings that search engine spiders obey. This is the most common redirect setup. To get started, find the .htaccess file in your website's root directory, save it to your desktop, and open it with Wordpad or your favorite text editor.

You'll see 301 Redirect code snippets in this tutorial - you can simply copy and paste them into your .htaccess file, and edit "mysite.com" with your site name.

Since these 301 redirect tutorials are for Apache users (if you have no idea what the hell Apache is, simply ask your server host. 99.99% of the time, you do have Apache. Otherwise, something really strange is afoot with your hosting provider). This is a "just in case" measure, but you'll want to make sure that "MOD REWRITE" is set to "on". A file called httpd.conf resides on your server. Within it, simply make sure the following line exists within this statement:

LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so

This is basically a default step, but definitely something worth mentioning in case everything seems to "look" right, but still doesn't work, after implementing your 301 redirect.

Please don't skim over this one! In your .htaccess file (considering you already have one), you'll see a line that says the following:

RewriteEngine ON

You'll want to put all of your 301 redirect statments UNDER this statement. If this statement doesn't exist, simply type it in as the first line. Note that if RewriteEngine ON doesn't exist in your .htaccess file, then 301 redirects simply will not work! With that being said, let's assume that you'll be using any of the 301 redirect tutorials below by inputting them below the "RewriteEngine ON" line, rather than me stating it under every single tutorial.

If you want to redirect "mysite.com/old.html" to "mysite.com/new.html", add the following line to your .htaccess file, under the line "RewriteEngine on":

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. Note how you must not type out the full web address for the first URL!

Note: You only have to include the line "RewriteEngine ON" only once in your .htaccess file...therefore, I won't keep repeating it in all of the examples below.

An important step for all webmasters is to redirect the non-www version of their URL to their www version (i.e., mysite.com to www.mysite.com) - otherwise, two versions of the site will exist, resulting in inaccurate analytical results, backlinks, and other issues. To fix it, look for the "RewriteEngine On" line in your .htaccess file, skip down two lines, and add the code, like this:

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

(...of course, replacing "mysite.com" with your actual site name)

Let's say you have an entire folder filled with sub-pages on your site, http://www.mysite.com/cars, and you've either renamed the URL structure of that folder to "/newcars" or wish to move it to "/newcars" (so that it looks like http://www.mysite.com/newcars). You'd also want all pages within the folder to remain the same, but just be located in the new folder named "/newcars" - so, the HTML page "cars/toyota.html" will still exist, but will just be located at "newcars/toyota.html". This is the statement you'd put in your .htaccess file, under the line "RewriteEngine on":

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

If you have a 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. level folder, like http://www.mysite.com/cars/classic and want to move "/cars/classic" over to "/cars/all/classic": http://www.mysite.com/cars/all/classic, you'd use this:

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

* Note that when you redirect folders, always leave the trailing "/" after the folder names.

Unlike the previous lesson, let's say that I have a folder on my site, "/cars" (http://www.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 no longer will be using those HTML pages, I'll want all of those pages, and the page for /cars itself, to point to http://www.mysite.com/products. This is what would be used:

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 (or whatever other page, like PHP, ASPX, etc.). For example, I want to move the entire category http://www.mysite.com/cars and all of its individual pages over to the single page, http://www.mysite.com/things/stuff.html:

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

Don't care for your domain name anymore? Or, maybe you have found a better one...or, maybe your company's name has changed? You'll want to re-direct your old site over to the new site and domain name. To move all of the contents of one domain name to another, create a blank ".htaccess" file (open Wordpad and save the file as .htaccess), and copy and paste this, and only this, into that file (adding in your new domain name):

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

Note that when you 301 redirect an old domain to a new one, you'll have to keep paying for the annual domain renewal and server account of the old domain name. It's a real pain - but once the 301 registers and all traces of backlinks to the old URL are nowhere to be seen, you can consider removing the old domain and its account. Do not remove the account if the old domain still gets direct type-in traffic, though.

You may have noticed [NC] in other 301 Redirect tutorials or statements: it simply tells your server that the value before it is not case sensitive, and ignores differences between capitalized and non-capitalized letters.

Take a look at this 301 redirect statement:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yoursite.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mysite.com/$1 [L,R=301]

Notice the "L" in the brackets, near the end? Note that the "L" represents "last line". So, anything after this statement will not be processed if this line matches. In other words, if you have two conflicting rules running at once, you'll want to use "L" at the end of the one that takes precedence (thanks to user Rhinoooow for this info!)

As previously stated, you can simply visited the page or site you've redirected, and see if it automatically forwards over to the new URL. If not, you may see an error message, or a generic page from your ISP.

To see which redirects were unsuccessful, you can use a free 301 redirect checker. Please note that you MUST do this if you have re-directed your non-www URL to your www URL, otherwise, pending issues may exist that you are not aware of.