What is correct string for a .htaccess to redirect a page in Serps to Home Page

[chirosche]

Hello All,

I am trying my hand at a simple .htaccess redirect. I put this.

RewriteRule ^xxxxxxxxx [R=permanent,L] [couldn't put the actual string here, it just comes up with the meta tags of my site.]

in the .htaccess file

I want a page that shows up in the serps that is useless and it usually shows up with another more important page, to redirect to my home page. But It Didn't work. Can you tell me what the correct string would be. what is wrong here?

Thank you,

[activeco]

If you want to redirect only one or just a few pages the simplest way of doing it in .htaccess is this:

redirect 301 /dir/old.html http:// yoursite com/home.html

If you want to redirect many pages in some other logical way (e.g all html requests should be php) you can use regex in RewriteRule expression:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^(.+)\.html$ http:// yoursite com/$1.php [r=301]

However, allow me to note that what you're trying to achieve will not work.
Once a search engine realize your 'non-important' page is the same as your home page, one of them will be erased from the index, probably the bad one.
So you will end up with not ranking at all and that's probably not what you wanted.

[chirosche]

So is it better to delete it altogether then? This page is not the same as the home page. It's a duplicate article, but it has pr2 and it's getting the traffic I want my homepage to get. But most important, it's duplicate content and totally unnecessary.

[activeco]

Then delete the other duplicate page (or even better disallow robots on it) and leave that one active.
You can additionally channel the PR flow from that PR2 to your home page by e.g. utilizing 'rel="nofollow"' in all the links except towards the home page.

[chirosche]

I don't think you understand. In the SERPS, one of my MAIN navigation pages shows up underneath the page I want to redirect. I cannot get rid of one of my main navigation pages. This duplicate article page no one stays on for more than a second. I want to capture the traffic by routing it to another more interesting page. I cannot get rid of one of main navigation pages. This article page is a duplicate page, meaning this article is also in my php articles section as well as an independent html page.

So i want to redirect this page to my home page or even this secondary page. Or perhaps entertain other ideas.

Thanks for your input.

[activeco]

Do you realize that 301 redirection to any other page will dry out the traffic it gets now?

[chirosche]

No i didn't realize that. Dry out the traffic the page gets now or the traffic of the page it's redirecting to? Best advice then is to what, remove the page, leave it or what?

[chirosche]

You can additionally channel the PR flow from that PR2 to your home page by e.g. utilizing 'rel="nofollow"' in all the links except towards the home page.

Also about this. Does this mean that when a person clicks on this page from the SE results that it will open as usual, but that PR can transfer to the Home Page by put rel="nofollow" in ALL THE LINKS??? You mean, manually put this next to every <a href on the site including all the regular navigation links. Forgive my lack of understanding here. I'm leanring.

Thank you.

[activeco]

Look, once you do 301 the page it gets redirected to gets associated with the redirecting page. If the new page is different enough (simetimes even slightly) it will not rank for the same keywords as before.

So you have a few options:

- Cloaking;
Not recommended, you can endanger the whole site

- 301 to the similar page, having more content;
Tricky, not worth a risk, besides not really a guaranty you will have visitors staying longer

- 302?
302 gets associated with redirected page too, with the old url, so new content, no real gain either.

- On page meta refresh with, say three seconds delay, hoping te be spidered and not followed;
Tricky.

- Leave as it is and make the most out of it;
IMO, the best valid solution is to use it's PR without braking anything.

[activeco]

Also about this. Does this mean that when a person clicks on this page from the SE results that it will open as usual, but that PR can transfer to the Home Page by put rel="nofollow" in ALL THE LINKS???

Yes, except in the links to the page you want the most of PR to be transfered.