How to set up search engine friendly 301 page redirect

[temi]

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Original posted by OWG of Umbrella Consultancy, umbrella-consultancy.co.uk
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Creating a .htaccess File to Configure a 301 Redirect
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The .htaccess file should be in the DocumentRoot directory for your web site. IMPORTANT. check to see if there is already a htaccess file there, if there is then download that, and ADD the instruction below, then upload it.
NEVER edit the htaccess in word or any other stylesheet type text editor as they create underlying code. use either notepad, or WordPad.

The .htaccess file contains two columns. The first column is what you want redirected and the second column is where you want it redirected to.

For example, to redirect an entire web site to another site:

Redirect 301 / newdomain.com/

Or, to redirect just one page to another page:

Redirect 301 /index.htm domain.com/index.html

This will cure all ills

OWG

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Original post can be found here:http://forums.ukwebmasterworld.com/v...hp?p=2649#2649

I'll have to give this a try as I've done no work to my error pages at all.

[temi]

Same here, I think a bit of work on the error page can help catch some users that would otherwise get annoyed and leave

This is definetly something we need. As often as we see the error pages on Lifesupporters because we're hosting with Canaca, we should have a better error page set up.

Any customers of Canaca should just make their error pages their Home Pages. Man those guys suck!

I actually think my 404's have a higher page rank than my index.php page does.

rofl actually I was going to make a similar comment, nice idea on making the error page the homepage, sometimes it feels like it.

I actually have it on my "to do" list but that list is growing exponentially by the hour.

If it is permanent shifting it's good but if you are using a 301 for a "temporary" shift in traffic that's risky. There is no guarantee hw long, or even if Google will reindex and rank the old page when you drop the 301.

[temi]

You are absolutely correct etechsupport,
301 is best used for permanent redirect

Right temi, I agree with you, redirecting the old domain using 301 redirect moved- permanently is a good idea, doing so you’ll be able to redirect all traffic from the old domain to the new domain.

However I'll suggest you should publish the changeovers to an online press release informing the online community of this changeover; usually people forget to do that.