Search Friendly Domain and File Redirects

Domain Level Redirect

As part of our series on domain names, we're going to discuss web site redirects, and why and how they should be implemented. Traditionally redirects are used to guide a user to the new location of an outdated page. However, they are also important on the domain level. To be precise, one of the first decisions you should make for your domain URL is whether it will be appended by a "www" For example, www.example.com vs example.com. Why do you need to pick one over the other?

Long story short, because users tend to type one or the other in the browser bar, and search engines may in fact treat both versions differently. This can result in your site's PageRank, as well as link popularity, being divided in two! The solution? The answer is to create a 301 (permanent) redirect from one to the other.

Permanent (301) vs Temporary (302) redirects

It's important for SEO purposes that you use a 301 redirect (permanent redirect), and not 302 (temporary). Most registrars use a term called domain forwarding, or URL forwarding. In most cases this will simply create a 302 redirect; few registrars to our knowledge apply 301s. The solution is for you to host the domain yourself and input the code below into your .htaccess file.

Redirect to WWW or to non-WWW?

Which one to redirect to? If you are just starting out and neither version has established a PageRank, we suggest you go with the "www" version. If, however, one version has already established a PageRank over the other (Visit our PageRank Calculator to find out what your site's PageRank is), redirect the one with lower PageRank to the one with higher PageRank.

Redirecting pages indexed by search engines

One of the most common (and important) reasons for redirecting your website pages is to maintain your search engine rankings when you transfer to a new hosting server or domain name. Skip straight to the bottom of this article, and the section redirecting search engine indexed pages, to learn more.

Rewrite Engine

Make sure you turn on your rewrite engine with the following line:

RewriteEngine on

Redirect From One Domain to Another

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www\.)?contract-web-development\.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.contractwebdevelopment.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Redirect from old domain to new domain (keeping files and folders intact)

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.new-domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

In this example replace new-domain.com with your new domain name. Thanks to the +FollowSymLinks line, all folders and files will redirect to your new domain name - ie. the only thing that will change is the domain name.

Redirect from subdomain to subdomain

If you'd like to redirect from one subdomain on a website to another, use the same redirect code listed above under redirect from one domain to another, but this time, place the redirect code in directory of the subdomain. That is, if you want to redirect sub.example1.com to sub.example2.com, you'll need to place the redirect (ie. .htaccess file) in the root folder of subdomain sub.example1.com.

Redirect From non-www to www or Vice Versa

There are several ways to implement a 301 redirect. The codes below for Apache and IIS redirect to www (from non-www) and will redirect corresponding subdirectories as well. Pick the one according to your needs and substitute in your domain name:

Redirecting from one file extension to another

Let's say you've added scripting to your website, and all your filename extensions are changing from .htm to .php. It's vital that you let search engines know that you're changing your file extensions, so they index the correct files and you don't get penalized for duplicate content.

In this example, we redirect all .htm files to their .php counterparts:

RewriteEngine On
RedirectMatch 301 (.*)\.htm$ http://www.example.com$1.php

Note that this will also redirect your index file. What this means is, if your index file was index.htm, your browser will now redirect to index.php when you load your site. This is not desirable, as your browser, and the search engines indexing your site, should load your root page (ie. example.com/), and not your index file directly (ie. example.com/index.php). Use the following code to set your directory index and redirect your index file back to its root:

Options +FollowSymLinks
DirectoryIndex index.php
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ http://www.example.com/ [R=301,L]

Note that if you combine the above two code snippets, which you probably should, you will only need the Rewrite statement once.  Below is all the code combined into one snippet:

Options +FollowSymLinks
DirectoryIndex index.php
RewriteEngine On
RedirectMatch 301 (.*)\.htm$ http://www.example.com$1.php
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ http://www.example.com/ [R=301,L]

Redirect a file, all extensions

To redirect a file, regardless of extension, simply use the following (Apache):

RewriteRule ^filename(.*)$ http://www.example.com/filename$1 [R=301,L]

If you want to specify a specific filename with extension, use the following:

RewriteRule ^filename.htm$ http://www.example.com/filename.htm$1 [R=301,L]

Apache

Simply add the follow directive to your .htaccess file:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example\.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Keeping file paths intact

You can modify the above to redirect www to non-www or vice versa and keep file paths intact:

www to non-www

rewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.example\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://example.com/$1 [R=301,L] )

non-www to www

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} .
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.example\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Redirect all files within a folder to another domain

Let's say a directory on your site has grown so big that you've decided to create a whole new website dedicated to its content. You may want to redirect files as is, in which case you'd use the example above for keeping file paths intact. If, however, you're starting over from scratch and simply want all the old links redirected to the root page of your new website, you could use the following:

RewriteRule ^directory/(.*)$ http://www.example.com/ [R=301,L]

All files in example.com/directory, including the directory itself, will be redirected to example.com. Another way to do this is to use RedirectMatch (from mod_alias instead of mod_rewrite):

RedirectMatch ^/directory http://www.example.com/

The potential issue with this approach is if your site is using frames. In this case, the new site may load within a frame of the old directory. In which case you'd be better served using the rewrite approach above.

Redirects for different server systems

So far all the examples have assumed you're using an Apache server environment. Below are some examples for Windows and other Linux servers and various coding environments.

IIS 5/6

• For the domain you're moving from, go to IIS Site Properties. Then select "A redirection to a URL." on the home directory (since we are redirecting the root folder, or domain)
• Next, enter the domain you wish to move to in the redirect box, followed by "$S$Q," making sure not to add a trailing slash - for example, http://www.example.com$S$Q
• Finally, select the option to sent the user to "The exact URL entered above", and "A permanent redirection for this resource."" (since we want a 301, not a 302 (temporary), redirect). 

ISAPI/ Rewrite

Directly edit your local httpd.ini file:

RewriteCond Host: ^example\.com
RewriteRule (.*) http\://www\.example\.com$1 [I,RP]

PHP

<?php
Header( "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" );
Header( "Location: http://www.example.com" );
?>

ASP

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

ASP.NET

<script runat="server">
private void Page_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
Response.Status = "301 Moved Permanently";
Response.AddHeader("Location","http://www.example.com");
}
</script>

ColdFusion

<.cfheader statuscode="301" statustext="Moved permanently">
<.cfheader name="Location" value="http://www.example.com">

Redirecting search engine indexed pages

One of the most important reasons for using the above redirects is to redirect your pages that are indexed by search engines when you transfer your website to a new server or domain name. To find out how to do so, read our article on how to transfer your website and maintain your search ranking.