301 redirect help

[Blayne]

My site which is set up with an online shopping cart builder did real well with all the search terms in the top 10 until a week ago on Google. Now my secondary pages are showing up in page 2-10 in the serps under these search terms with the homepage disapearing. I think this could be due to having my main domain name of www.qsiwholesale.com at godaddy and forwarded to the www.wholesalesilver.safeshopper.com I think in the past couple weeks google looked at that as duplicate content. I wrote to godaddy about a 301 redirect and here is there response.

"Thank you for contacting customer support. The domain forwarding is all done at the DNS level. The 301 permenant redirect is when you redirect from an actual webpage. We do not support or setup 301 permenant redirecting."

I have been having a new site built for the last few months just using an IP address and it looks like they won't be done for a bit. Should I move my domain name there and put a 301 redirect to the wholesalesilver.safeshopper site until it is completed? The qsiwholesale.com domain is where most my links point to. If so I have to figure out how to do it. Maybe CBP can answer since I know he talks alot about 301 redirects. :) but I will take any suggestions.

Blayne
www.wholesalesilver.safeshopper.com

[mm99]

Just use a java redirect in the head and you'll be fine. I do it all the time. If you need more info just email me.

peace...Paul

[Blayne]

Paul:

Thank you for your response. Do you think the way goddady had the forward that is why my site and pages are disapearing and moving down daily in google after being well indexed for the past few months?

[daxesh]

When you redirect be careful not to follow any redirect method. 301 redirect method is the best one which you should follow. If Godaddy doesn't allow you to do it than just host the site to diffrent provider and also change the dns. Then go in for 301 redirect.

[incrediblehelp]

daxesh,

Cant you simply use a 301 redirect in tandem with changing the DNS? I am having the same problem with multiple domain names with duplicate content. I want abc.com (for example) to be the primary site ranked within Google. Right now Google is seeing abcproducts.com and abcsales.com and ranking only these two sites. I would like to keep these secondary sites live for the end users, but I would like the search engines only to focus on abc.com. Right now all three sites have the exact same sight info on them and I assume Google is demoting abc.com and only picking up pages from abcproducts.com and abcsales.com because of this duplication. In the future I don't care if the secondary sites fall to the waste side in the engines but I would like to keep them up for end users.

Also what type of redirection would you do if the site is not running on Apache?

[daxesh]

A specialist know his work better than anyone else if he doen't than there is need for improvement.

[Blayne]

Ok so now I have the new hosting account and am transfering the domain name. So when it transfers what code do I put in the htaccess file to make the domain name qsiwholesale do a 301 redirect to wholesalesilver.safeshopper.com until the new site is done. Someone also suggested a mod rewrite which I have no clue on. If you started reading here see the original problem at the top. Thanks in advance.

Blayne
www.wholesalesilver.safeshopper.com

[daxesh]

You can use this in your asp code :

<%@ Language=VBScript %> <% Response.Status="301 Moved Permanently" Response.AddHeader "Location", "http://www.someotherdomain.com/page.aspx" %>

the 301 code sent in the header information informs the search engine that you no longer want the requested domain to be the focus, it tells them that you moved your site to a new domain. It's kind of like filling out a change of address form at the post office where yes, you'll still get mail to the old address, but the post office knows to forward it on to your new address. Eventually all mail will go to the new address and the old address is no longer associated with your mail. This is what we want to do with our old domains, let them know we moved. By doing this you can avoid confusion with search results, and limit the adverse affects on your site's ranking with the new domain name.

[Blayne]

Daxesh:

Thank you for your responses. I am using php not asp. someone said if I enter the following it would work. I want to make sure I get it right for google before I move everything.

In your qsiwholesale.com .htacces file, put this line of code:

Redirect permanent / http://www.wholesalesilver.safeshopper.com

The first "/" means "root"... Any time you try to go to www.qsiwholesale.com you should get redirected to www.wholesalesilver.safeshopper.com and have a log entry showing a 301 Moved Permanent response.

That should be be all there is to it!

Blayne
www.wholesalesilver.safeshopper.com

[incrediblehelp]

daxesh,

Just adding another situation for further discussion to the forum about 301 redirection has nothing to do with "Internet Marketing Specialist". I suppose helping others with various situational advice is not the use of these forums?

[AussieWebmaster]

Okay this should get it done for you.

Giving search engine spiders direction with a 301 redirect


Scenario
You are upgrading your web site and as part of the upgrade, it means moving and renaming particular files.

Danger
Search engines have indexed your entire site and many pages rank well. By moving and renaming these files, you run the risk of losing a lot of traffic and leaving visitors to your site who follow a search engine link with the dreaded "Error 404 - File not found"

Strategy 1 - Custom Error Page
You could create a custom error page. The problem with this solution is that:

a) You will lose rankings on the next search engine update as the file will appear to be non-existent. It could be some time before the page in it's new location or with a new name reappears.

b) Your web site visitors may be frustrated by the fact that they then have to dig through your site to find the desired information.

Strategy 2 - Meta Refresh
A meta refresh can be implemented in the <head> statement of your source code in blank page with the old file name, which then automatically redirects visitors to the new page. Example:

<HEAD>
<META HTTP-EQUIV="refresh" content="0;URL=http://www.new.com/new.htm">
<TITLE>Page has moved</TITLE>
</HEAD>

Warning: This is a technique often used by spammers to trick search engines and it should be avoided, unless the page is in a section of your site that isn't spidered.

What the search engine spammers do is to create a page that is optimized for certain keywords and phrases - it usually has no real content. The page is then picked up by some search engines, but when a visitor clicks on the search engine entry, they are redirected to another site, often unrelated.

It's a despicable trick, but thankfully most search engines have filters to detect this. Using this form of SE deception will see a site eventually banned or penalized by major players such as Google.

Strategy 2 - 301 Redirect
A 301 redirect is the most efficient and spider/visitor friendly strategy around for web sites that are hosted on servers running Apache (check with your hosting service if you aren't sure). It's not that hard to implement and it will preserve your search engine rankings for that particular page.

A 301 redirect is implemented in your .htaccess file.

What is a .htaccess file?
When a visitor/spider requests a web page via any means, your web server checks for a .htaccess file. The .htaccess file contains specific instructions for certain requests, including security, redirection issues and how to handle certain errors.

What is a 301 redirect?
The code "301" is interpreted as "moved permanently". After the code, the URL of the missing or renamed page is noted, followed by a space, then followed by the new location or file name

How do I implement a 301 redirect?
First of all, you'll need to download the .htaccess file in the root directory of where all your web pages are stored. If there is no .htaccess file there, you can create one with Notepad or a similar application. Make sure when you name the file that you remember to put the "." at the beginning of the file name. This file has no tail extension.

If there is a .htaccess file already in existence with lines of code present, be very careful not to change any existing line unless you are familiar with the functions of the file.

Scroll down past all the existing code, leave a line space, then create a new line that follows this example:

redirect 301 /old/old.htm http://www.you.com/new.htm

It's as easy as that. Save the file, upload it back into your web and test it out by typing in the old address to the page you've changed. You should be instantly and seamlessly transported to the new location.

Notes: Be sure not to add "http://www" to the first part of the statement - just put the path from the top level of your site to the page. Also ensure that you leave a single space between these elements:

redirect 301 (the instruction that the page has moved)

/old/old.htm (the original folder path and file name)

http://www.you.com/new.htm (new path and file name)

[Blayne]

I would like to thank everyone who responded with your help. I have gotten it done. I hope that google will look well upon the homepage again. I am not sure why google looked at my redirect from godaddy as the same site for the last few months and suddenly started looking at it as 2 different sites. Hopefully by using this 301 it will correct itself. I am still placing well for some very specific keyword phrases. I just lost the homepage and main phrases. Thanks again.

Blayne
www.wholesalesilver.safeshopper.com
aka qsiwholesale.com