Some Imperative Insights into 301 Redirect And Their Importance
For people who are looking forward to alter or modify their web portals or chip in for upgradation, which innately means renaming and moving files; there is a constant risk of losing immense traffic as the search engines would have earlier indexed the specific web pages and when people follow the link given in search engines, they will face the terrifying 404 error – page not found.
Reorganizing the web site is the most common cause of such a milieu and in such a circumstance; the most feasible solution is 301 redirect. People often argue that why not just create a custom error page and get done with it. Well there is actually a dilemma in doing so. The first problem is that when the next time a crawler or a search engine spider indexes the particular page, the absence will affect the rankings; it also risks immobilizing the power of inbound links.
Yet another technical detour is to bring into play MetaRefresh tags. Well you should not engage in such sort of things as this technique is usually utilized by spammers and are often penalized too. In such a scenario making use of 301 redirects is the best solution at hand. It displays a message “301 Moved Permanently” and then efficiently redirects you to that new web page. Well when it comes down to the question of how to go about implementing 301 on your own web portal, this article will help you a great deal. Fore mostly search for the .htaccess file in your root directory and if not found download and upload it. A simple code somewhat like this –
Redirect to www:
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
Redirect Old domain to New domain:
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
Yes it is that easy and after writing the code, you should save it and upload it on to your server. It should also be noted that this works for dynamic pages and static pages will find this futile. It will definitely sweep you off your feet to know that 301 redirects have the power to redirect not only web pages but also entire web portals. What is more alluring and appealing about the 301 redirect is that they keep your search engine rankings intact. What the search engine crawlers and spiders will do is follow the 301 redirect and index the redirected web page.
Once you bring into play the HTTP 301 redirect you no more have to worry about page rank fro major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. The 301 is a way to point it out to the search engine that this specific web page has moved on to a new address and that it should redirect users looking for this page to that page. This is indeed a great solution for web entities who wish to update their contents and web pages on a regular basis to keep their web viewers abreast with the latest developments taking place in their niche industry segment.
404 Error Pages Are Imperative: – Here Is How And Why?
Have it occurred with you that you were searching for a specific web page on the world wide web and when you enter the address in the web browser and hit enter it displays a 404 error. Well you are not alone as it happens when you try to look for a web page which does not exist. There are many causes for such an error. One is that the web address was mistyped, second is if the page has been deliberately deleted from the server or it could also have been because the page has been moved out.
Whatever the reason may be, you will always find the end result to be the same in the form of a blank web page declaring that “The page you were looking for could not be found. It might have been removed, had its name changed or is temporarily unavailable.” On reaching this page, may people actually lean away from the web portal and stop browsing the web portal altogether, which is not healthy in terms of incoming traffic for that particular web site.
However this quandary has a resolution in the form of customary 404 page. This personalized 404 error page can actually encourage web users to stay at the web portal and look for other things and not just leave the site right away. If you are wondering how to customize your 404 page and what should be the contents of that page, this article will assist you endlessly.
Well at the least you should have clear mention of your website brand and a short but not the usual and monotonic page describing that the page could not be found and at last, there should be a link which redirects web visitors to the home page. You should not forget that the web portal should be user friendly and uncomplicated to navigate.
There are however certain factors to consider if you want to design a perfect 404 page. A perfect 404 page is one which makes the user feel as if the error never occurred in the firs place. A brilliant idea is to amalgamate a form which asks the user to fill it up and give feedback. We have come across as to why a 404 page is needed.
Now let us sneak a quick look as to how the procedure is to be implemented in order to gain maximum profit from the current situation. With the assistance of an expert and experienced web designer, create a 404 error page which will appeal to the web user’s penchant and at the same time fulfill your prerequisites.
You can then save it to the root directory on your server. Search for “.htaccess”, and if not found create one and then add the code ‘ErrorDocument 404 /404error.html’ to it. This 404 is not any random number as it signifies a meaning. The first 4 denotes that it might be an error on the user’s part. The o is for syntax inaccuracy and the last 4 for any specific error.
