TexasDesign.com

Imagine a company coming to you that is thrilled to finally be revamping their tired old website design with your fresh new concept.  They love the vibrancy of the colors, they are ecstatic about the design, they can’t get over your creativity with the layout… then when the site finally goes live, their search engine rankings plummet because the URL’s weren’t redirected properly.  Suddenly, that once happy client is now leaving a message that begins with “we have to talk…” on your voicemail.

It happens all the time.  I saw this very situation happen up close and personal with a large children’s clothing e-tailer.  When I met them, they were desperately trying to boost their search engine position by spending a large sum on aggressive SEO after loosing ranking in the wake of a website redesign.

When redirecting URL’s it’s best to learn about the topic in full depth or to factor in the cost of hiring a web development firm that specializes in search engine optimization to help you to accomplish this properly.

Here are some key things to note if you’ll be handling the redirect yourself:

• Never use JavaScript to redirect:  Search engine spiders don’t execute JavaScript and therefore will only read the content from the old pages.
• Use a permanent 301 redirect if the URL’s will change, or if there are pages that once existed, but won’t any longer.  If you’re going from HTML to PHP file extension, or if you move from a flat file to a directory structure then consequently, all of your URL’s will change.  Also, if you change shopping cart software, the long query string associated with products will be completely different once the new software is implemented.
• Prevent future redirect problems by create search engine friendly URL’s using rewrite rules in the .htaccess file.

Example:

RewriteRule ^dog_beds/(.+)/(.+)/(.+)-(.+)-(.+)-(.+)\.htm$ product_info.php?group_title=$1&product_title=$2&sub_title=$3&pet_title=$4&breed_title=$5&figurine=$6

• If you only want to redirect visitors temporarily (for example, to show an “under construction” page) use a 302 temporary redirect.
• Use the “site:www.yourdomain.com” command to ensure that all of the pages that search engines have indexed have a new home.  This will allow you to view all of the pages that Google has indexed so that you can test for a proper redirect.

David Williams is an Ethical Search Engine Optimization expert located in Raleigh, North Carolina. He is vice president of the web development and SEO firm Unlimited Web Solutions.  David is a public speaker and has worked with people all over the United States marketing their websites.