All webmasters who are concerned with search engine optimization (SEO) should take time to learn about redirecting web pages. Because inbound links to a web page Página Web weigh heavily in search engine ranking algorithms, understanding how to retain the SEO benefits of those links using redirection when a page is deleted or permanently moved is crucial to optimizing a web site.
Typically when a web browser or search engine crawler requests a page at a particular URL on your web site, the web server where your site is hosted tries to locate the page at that URL so that it can return the corresponding HTML to the requester. If the web page exists then the web server returns the HTML needed to render the page as well as a 200 HTTP status in the header of the response. The 200 status notifies the requesting browser or crawler that the page was found and its HTML was returned.
Another common method of redirecting involves the use of a 302 (or temporary) redirect. It is called a 302 redirect because of the HTTP status code that is returned by the web server when this type of redirect is used. 302 redirection can be implemented using server-side scripting languages or redirection utilities like Mod Rewrite.
When a browser or search engine crawler requests an old URL from your web site which has been 302 redirected, the web server returns a new URL in the location field of the HTTP header and an HTTP status of 302. The 302 status indicates to the browser or crawler that the web page has been temporarily moved. The browser or crawler will then request the new URL from your web server. The web server will return the HTML from the new URL and a 200 HTTP status indicating the new web page was found.
302 redirects do no transfer credit to the new URL for inbound links pointing to the old URL because the search engines see this type of redirect as only temporary. They simply index the content found at the new URL and associate it with the old URL in their index. This means that the new URL does not benefit from an SEO perspective as a result of the redirect.
The only truly SEO friendly redirection method involves using a 301 (or permanent) redirect. Like the 302 redirect, it gets its name because of the HTTP status code returned by the web server when this method is used to redirect a web page. And like the 302 redirect, this method of redirection can be implemented using server-side scripting languages or utilities like Mod Rewrite.
When a browser or crawler requests an old web page that has been 301 redirected, your web server will return a 301 HTTP status code with the new URL in the location field of the HTTP header. The 301 status code tells the browser that the old web page has been permanently moved and can now be found at the new URL. The browser or crawler will then request the new URL from the web server which should return the HTML for the new web page with a 200 status code to indicate that the new page was found.
Because the 301 redirect means that the page located at the old URL has permanently moved to the new URL, the search engines will transfer credit to the new URL for all inbound links pointing to the old URL as those links are crawled again and the 301 redirect is discovered for each link. The fact that the new URL gets credit for inbound links to the old URL will benefit the new URL from an SEO perspective. It will assist the new URL in ranking for keyword phrases for which the old web page might have ranked.
When composing the text on your web pages, there are a few things you want to do in order to make it very easy for search engines’ “crawlers” to see what’s important on your website. These crawlers, or “spiders, ” comb over the millions of pages on the internet and report their findings to places like Google and Yahoo. Google and Yahoo use this information to categorize and rank web pages.
Therefore, it’s very important that the crawlers see your web pages clearly. The thing is, though, that crawlers don’t look at your pages the way people do. Crawlers read ALL the text within your web page, including the text behind the scenes, like the html code, the file names of images, and something else called the “meta” information. Crawlers don’t see the colors or actual images–they just don’t care about that kind of thing!