SEO Tycoon

**duskdawn** · 07-12-2006, 10:24 PM

Hi,
I changed site url recently but I don't want to lose the SE traffic. So I wonder how can I redirect all the old indexed url to the new site.
For example:
www.xyz.com/d28-0?.pjh8784 -------> www.abc.com
Thank you for your help.

**vangogh** · 07-13-2006, 02:31 AM

What you want is a 301 redirect from the old page to the new page. There are several different ways you can set it up so I'll just give you a couple of links that should have everything you need.

301 redirects for Apache server
301 redirects for IIS server

**Bisquix** · 07-16-2006, 03:27 PM

you can just use httpd redrect in the meta tag if you are in a hurry

**stOx** · 07-16-2006, 05:15 PM

If you have loads of pages missing and just want to redirect people to your homepage instead of seeing a 404 set up a custom 404 error page to send people to a page that exists.

I don't know what status this will send, so i don't know how bot friendly this is.
Does anyone know?

**vangogh** · 07-16-2006, 06:31 PM

I don't think the 404 will pass on any seo benefits. Search engines will see the 404 as the old page not existing anymore and if they see too many pages of a site no longer existing they may interpret it as the site itself going away. A 301 redirect is really the best and only safe way to transfer any seo gains to a new page.

A custom 404 can still be good to have though for your visitors since you can at least redirect them or provide other choices for them or even just your main navigation.

**stOx** · 07-16-2006, 06:55 PM

Good to know.

Is there a way of sending a 301 status for all pages not found on that server?
Or do you think it would be harmful to use a 301 for a variety of pages on one server going to the same location on another server? Would google see it as suspicious that all of those pages have "moved" to the same location (home page) on a new server?

**vangogh** · 07-17-2006, 12:04 AM

stOx, SEOmoz has a pretty good guide to 310 redirects. About midway down the page is the one you'd want.

I'm not sure if the search engines would have a problem with it since you'd really just be redirecting one url to another. I would think it would be better for visitors though if they were taken to the closest matching page instead of always to the home page. If there's no page that's close then I'd redirect to the home page.

**stOx** · 07-17-2006, 12:17 AM

Thanks for the link, I'lll have a look at that.