What is a 301 Redirect?
A 301 is a page status, much like a 200 (OK) or a 404 (page not found error). You can find a whole list of page status codes online. A 301 tells Google that your site is no longer at that location and can be found at another location.
Imagine you are going to a friend’s house. You know where they live – you have been to their house before. You go to visit but nobody is at their house. Unsure, you go home. Later, you return and still, nobody is there. Finally, you turn up with a few friends who are in town but your friends still aren’t home. You find out a month later that they’d moved. If only you had known, right?
The purpose of a 301 is to tell Google the first time they see it that you are gone and not coming back. 302 is a temporary page not found but 301 means “gone, gone for good. Moved somewhere else. Don’t check back.”
Why Use a 301?
What would you think if you were trying to refer your friend for work and when you showed the potential clients to their house, they were disappointed that your friends weren’t home. Would you want to refer them? Would those clients hire them even if they found your friends later?
Google refers people to businesses 30 million times a day. Every referral that searchers like gives them favorable impressions of Google. Every referral that sends them somewhere they don’t want to be is a vote against Google as well.
Imagine the same idea but instead, this time you sent your friend to not only a home that people had moved out of but a neighborhood full of bad links (thugs), spam (drug dealers) and id theft links. How long do you think Google would be in business if their results were littered with these type of links? Google’s entire job is to find a site that does the job and provides exactly what the client (searcher) wants with as little fuss as necessary. You may think Google wants people to complete as many searches as possible but it’s not true. Imagine if you search 10 times for something or once. Which result makes you want to use the search engine again (for a different search)?
How Do I Setup a 301 Redirect?
Hundreds of sites will tell you how to accomplish a 301 redirect and they’re far more technical in their analysis. The one I prefer to use is SEOMoz’s many ways to do 301 redirects.
You may find that one method works better than another depending on your server. You also want to be sure that you redirect files, not just a main domain across to another main domain. However you do your 301 redirect, be sure to backup your .htaccess file first and test what works best for your domain.
