Search Engine Optimization: 301 Redirects For URLs

If you've been struggling to get your website boosted in the search engines, it's possible that you may have overlooked a problem you don't even know you have.

Often times, novice webmasters don't realize that the address for their website http://yourwebsite.com and http://www.yourwebsite.com are not the same, and may be seen by the search engines as two separate domain entities. In other words, Google may be treating your site http://yourwebsite.com differently from http://www.yourwebsite.com, and therefore your links and pagerank are being seen as belonging to two separate sites.

As an example, if your site has 1,000 backlinks, and you may know that backlinks are an important factor in Google's assessment of your pagerank, Google may see separate link totals; 447 for the "//" site and 553 for the "www" site. That means you are not getting credited for having a total of 1,000 backlinks. This can cause your site to have a lower overall pagerank and thus lower placement in search engine results.

The problem is easily corrected through a 301 Redirect. A 301 Redirect simply points one address to the other, so that they are ultimately seen by the search engines as one. If you don't know whether you have this problem or not, perform a Google search for http://yourwebsite.com and then http://www.yourwebsite.com. If the information you get is not identical, then your web addresses are not being seen the same.

You can also go to Hubspot's Webgrader (see previous blog post at http://www.blog.getmywealthnow.com/2007/10/what-in-world-is-hubspot-do-you-know.html) and perform an analysis of your site. The resulting information will tell you whether or not you have a redirect in place so that your "//" site and "www" site are seen as one.

There are various places to get the code for 301 Redirects. Simply do a Google search for "301 redirect" and you'll find them. Then place the code into your .htaccess file (found in the root directory for your website; note the "." before the name) to complete the update to your site (most 301 Redirect information includes information about creating an .htaccess file if you need it)

Toodles.