How To Do a 301 Redirect

You don't want your own site competing against itself

301 Redirects are crucial to the SEO of your website.

Let’s start with why they are important.

The search engines do not like seeing duplicate content across the web, and a website that has not been optimized can usually end up having multiple URL’s for for the same webpage.  This means that even though example.com and www.example.com take you to the same place, the search engines see them as two competing pages with the same content, and thus rank you lower.  A 301 Redirect code means that the information on the redirected URL has been “moved permanently” to the appropriate URL.  What you end up with is one stronger webpage, instead of two weaker pages that are competing against themselves, instead of your competitors.  301 redirects are a very efficient method for increasing your rankings, because they are a change that can be made very quickly, with very little effort, but can have a big impact on your rankings.

Here are some common URL’s you should check to make sure are redirecting to the www. version of your URL on your homepage:

- yourhomepage.com
– yourhomepage.com/index.html (or .php, or whatever language your site is written in)
- www.yourhomepage.com/index.html (or .php, or whatever language your site is written in)