Important points to follow while redirecting webpages

If you have a website and want to permanently switch all your content to another website or have a new domain then you need to use 301 redirects for redirecting

webpages. HTTP status code – 301 redirects are used when you are permanently redirecting your posts to another URL and will never or no longer use the old URL whereas 302 redirects are used for temporary redirects.

Following are some of the best practices that should be followed while redirecting webpages:

* Do not redirect to the home page or root of a domain name as it doesn’t make sense and is not useful. When people search for something, Google will point to a post in your website and when user clicks on this post it won’t be nice to redirect URL to the root or the home page. Instead redirect to the exact post so that users get the right content.

* There is no limit set by Google for redirects, so you can have N number of redirects. This is helpful when you migrate from Blogger or WordPress domains to your own domain and want to change or redirect permanently.

* See that you keep the number of redirects for the same URL to the minimum. Ideal number would be just one hop and a maximum of three. If you have more than two or three then Google Crawl may show No-Follow message under Google Web-masters.

* It’s always better to use absolute links than relative links. Example: Use http://howtotechguru.com/newest-of-new-chrome-features/717 instead of just /newest-of-new-chrome-features/717

* Check all your redirects are pointing to the right pages or not. If not correct them to point to the page and then submit it for indexing.

* Avoid URLs pointing to the same post else Google Web-masters while crawling will throw “Loop error” message.

* Avoid using redirecting URLs in sitemaps.

* Keep your URL simple and short. See that the redirected URL doesn’t contain information like session IDs etc. This will help search bots to crawl your website without session IDs.

* It’s always better to minimize the number of redirects and try to make every page or post on your website reachable from atleast one static text link.

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