Don\'t Lose Your Ranking, Use a 301 Redirect
 by Mattya56
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05-21-2007
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A Fate Worse than Death
So let's say you've spent years building up your natural search traffic. You've made it to the front page of Google, Yahoo! and MSN. Your getting so much traffic from natural search you've dropped your PPC spending to a bare minimum. In fact, the only reason you do it is to have extra links on the first page of the SERP and thereby increase trust and brand awareness. You've written hundreds of articles, you've got thousands of links, you've got navigation so clean you could do surgery on it, you've got architecture that rivals Frank Lloyd Wright, to sum it up: you've done it. Then the big brass comes into your office, you know the one that says "Webmaster" on the door, and says, "Son, we need to make a change." You explain to them that they are getting the majority of their traffic through natural search and that you are saving them thousands of dollars in PPC spending each month because of said natural traffic. Confused, they look at each other as if you just spoke to them in Mandarin and repeat, "Son, we need to make a change."
Never Fear 301 Redirect is Here
That's right, even if the big dogs at your company say its time for a change you can still hang on to all the work you've already done. Simply use a 301 redirect to "re-direct" all of your old traffic to your new site. Sounds simple, right? Well, it is, but unfortunately millions of webmasters aren't employing this simple tactic for one main reason - they don't know how or they don't know about them. Consider the fact that most Web sites are small, independently owned businesses that cannot afford the luxury of a well-trained webmaster. Many people are going at this alone. For that crowd, I say you're not alone, don't be embarrassed, read on friends!
How to Do a 301 Redirect On a Unix Server
1. Locate or create an .htaccess file on your server. This file will give robots instructions on security and redirects.
2. If you need to create one its easy, just use a text file and name it ".htaccess".
3. If one already exists scroll past the existing code and prepare to give new redirect instructions.
4. Enter the redirect instructions in this manner:
redirect 301 /directory/file.html http://www.newdomainname.com/directory/file.html
5. The "directory/file" is the name of the file being moved and the "http://www.newdomainname.com" is the location where its being moved.
6. Now upload that bad boy and keep all that traffic you worked so hard to get.
