Redirecting your content using 301 redirects
Posted by Stuart on February 12th, 2010 - Cornwall office  

There will often be times when you want to redirect users from one page to another page on a permanent basis. Especially when the original page shows up in search results. The last thing you want is for users to click onto your content, and be presented with an ugly 'Sorry, page not found'.

Using .htaccess

To redirect users to the new page from the old page, we can use 301 redirects in an .htaccess file. This file should be located at the root of your public website. If you want to redirect the user from /my_old_page to /my_new_page, put the following in your.htaccess file.

redirect 301 /my_old_page /my_new_page

Redirecting to other sites

This isn't just limited to redirecting within your own site. You can redirect to other sites too:

redirect 301 /my_old_page http://www.newdomain.com/my_new_page

A 301 redirect is the most search engine friendly way to redirect the page, as it means the page has moved permanently.