15 replies to this topic

[ImVickieB]

Hi,

What is the best way to change the url of a webpage so that google doesn't think I am trying to trick it?

I am listed in google with pregnancytests.html but I want to change it to pregnancy-tests.html

Can I use a htaccess redirect? Do I leave the page on the server but stop linking to it and have the menus on the site point to the new url? The page is going to be slightly changed but not by much.

I really would like to hear your suggestions.

Thanks!

[Jill]

Yes, you can use the .htaccess to redirect. Make sure you do the permanent redirect, as opposed to the temporary one. Want it to return a 301.

You don't need to leave the files up on the old server. All pages should redirect.

Jill

[ImVickieB]

Thanks Jill!

[torka]

Yes, you can use the .htaccess to redirect.  Make sure you do the permanent redirect, as opposed to the temporary one.  Want it to return a 301. 

Okay, dumb question time. I know how to put a redirect statement into the .htaccess file, but what -- if anything -- extra do I need to do to make sure it's "the permanent kind" as opposed to a temporary one?

--Torka

[ImVickieB]

Hi Torka,

I think it is actually what you put into the htacess file. The coding example I found is:

Redirect permanent /one http://example.com/two

Hope that helps!

[BrianR]

Hello Vickie B

Forgive me if I'm being stupid here, but I went to check out the coding example you gave for the permanent redirect but got a 404...

Thanks

BrianR

[ImVickieB]

Hi,

That was just an example Brian.

Let say you have a page on your site that you currently have named europeanwidgets.hmtl and you want to make it a smidge more optimized for the search engines, you might want to change it to european-widgets.html.

In your htaccess file for your website, you would put:

Redirect permanent /europeanwidgets.html http://yourwidgetsit...an-widgets.html

Now, any link on other webpages or in the search engines going to http://yourwidgetsit...eanwidgets.html will be automatically redirected to http://yourwidgetsit...an-widgets.html

Hope that helps!
Vickie

[Matt B]

Have you thought about adding a custom 404 page as a catch-all to the rest of the traffic. Some of the search engines do not follow the 301 redirect, but a good 404 Page would keep people on your site despite any mispellings or page name changes.

Of course, this is only if you have a host that will do this for you . . .

[BrianR]

Aaah... so I WAS being stupid!

But thank you for your patience, Vickie - NOW I understand!

And Matt, that's a great idea re the customised 404 page - a 'belt and braces' approach - I'm sure I can persuade the smaller hosts to oblige...

What great advice from both of you - this forum rocks!

BrianR

[Minerva]

I've got a related question. I'm redoing a site and will be using server-side includes for the lower-level navigation areas. My web host requires pages with server-side includes to have an extension of .shtml. Is changing a page from .html to .shtml the same as changing its name before the extension? Should I do redirects for these pages?

The previous posts were helpful. I hadn't thought of doing redirects via the htaccess file. I always did them in the old files, and kept them around. This is the best forum.

-Andrea-

[garyhall]

You don't need to leave the files up on the old server.  All pages should redirect.

Jill

Jill is correct. In our case we wanted certain old pages that referred to a particular product that is no longer sold to be directed to the new item.

The SE's still had the old pages indexed and why should we lose the visitor and make him search for the new item. Well that is our thinking any way. I am sure the mighty brains on this forum will say, Hey you could have done it this way or that.... <g> I can tell you I have been set straight more than once and it was appreciated too.

Anyway, below is the code I used to "customize" each page. Bring up the page, highlight all and delete. Then cut-n-paste the following code into the now blank page. Modify to your tastesave the page and test.

The part of keeping the old pages is not much of a problem for us as they are 1 kb and we ask the SE not to reindex. So after 6 months when we see no more log activity on that particular page we delete it. Not a big deal as we are FTPing in all the time doing other things anyway.

I posted this once before, I hope it is a help to you.

Regards,

Gary
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
You will want to add the following to the <head> section of the pages:

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="x; url=y">

where x is the number of seconds delay before redirection occurs and y
is the new URL. You may also want to add some code to the page body to
include a link to the new page, in case the visitor's browser does not
support redirection. A complete code example could look like

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR...l4/strict.dtd">

<html lang="en-us">
<head>
<title>TITLE</title>

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="5; url=NEW_URL">

<meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow">

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;
charset=iso-8859-1">
</head>

<body>
<p>This page has moved. If you are not
automatically redirected within five seconds, please
follow this link to <a href="NEW_URL">NEW_URL</a>.</p>
</body>
</html>

where the obvious are subsituted for TITLE and NEW_URL.

[Minerva]

Gary - that's how I've been doing redirects, too. But I want to look into the .htaccess file method. It sounds like it might be good for those of us who don't want to be bothered keeping track of the old pages.

The simpler the better!

-Andrea-

[realnames]

.....that's a great idea re the customised 404 page........

Could someone please explain exactly how to do a 404? Thanks!

[Scottie]

The hosts I use look for a page named 404.shtml to return a 404 error- I think that is pretty standard but check with your host to be sure.

Just create a page with your standard navigation, look and feel, along with a message "Sorry this page doesn't exist / has moved", save as 404.shtml and upload it to the same folder your home page is in.

I recommend using fully qualified URL's (as opposed to relative, I.E.- include http://) on a custom error page- then if you have or create subfolders, the links and images on your page will still work.

[qwerty]

It's different if your site is hosted on a Windows server. You can call the file whatever you want, and then you point IIS to it. Here are the instructions from Microsoft:

To customize an error message by mapping to a file
Create a file that contains your custom error message, and place it in a directory.
In the Internet Information Services snap-in, select the Web site, virtual directory, directory, or file you would like to customize HTTP errors, and then click Properties.
Select Custom Errors.
Select the HTTP error that you would like to change, in this case 404.
Click Edit Properties.
Select File from the drop-down list.
Enter the full path that points to your customized error message, or use Browse... to locate the file on your computer's hard disk.
Click OK.