How important is it to make a 301 redirect?

[optimuswarrior]

Hi,

I'm changing my static site to a wordpress as a CMS site AND I've changing my hosting provider as well.

I wonder how important is it for me to make a 301 redirect page/script? My niche for my city is not very competitive and I do rank decently high for it as well.

However, competitive or not, I don't want to drop out of google.

My idea is that with the landing pages, blog, and other SEO techniques, I can work towards dominating google anyway -perhaps not needing to do a 301.

What do you think?

thanks

[moemark]

Maybe you can use the same url to wordpress.

[Gog]

Its very important, so that PR is passed on and that you dont lose any traffic.

[optimuswarrior]

I see. Is there a simple guide online somewhere I can follow on how to make them and where to put them?

It's likely that I'll be changing the URLs of each page as well so I want google to still find it.

[Peter Adamson]

Best solution: don't change the url.

If you must change the url, then use a 301. You will not lose your rank in the serps. If you don't use 301 you are starting over from scratch.

At the root level of your server (the same directory where you put index.html or index.php) create a text file called .htaccess

Note the dot as the first character of the file name. Inside this file add a line like this:
Redirect 301 /bar.html http://www.foobar.com/foo.html

There are four parts to the line, separated by spaces.
1) The word 'Redirect'
2) The number 301
3) The old url. You don't need a fully qualified url, just a pathname will do as it is understood this url is on the server in question.
4) The new url. This must be a fully qualified url beginning with http

I hope this helps.

[optimuswarrior]

Hi Peter,

Thanks! This helped a lot and clears a lot of questions.

I do have two Q's to clarify.

At the root level of your server (the same directory where you put index.html or index.php) create a text file called .htaccess

This is at my NEW host that my domain name is pointing to, right? There's no reason to put it at my old host as it won't be found, correct?

The old url. You don't need a fully qualified url, just a pathname will do as it is understood this url is on the server in question.

The old files for the old URL don't have to be there right? Just the full pathname is enough?

Thanks.

[josephalford]

Mmm... it's not really importance per se but how usable you intend your site to be. Nobody likes following a link only to end up with a 404 file not found error.

[Peter Adamson]

Originally Posted by optimuswarrior

The old files for the old URL don't have to be there right? Just the full pathname is enough?

No, the old files will never be seen. When your visitor points his/her browser at www.yoursite.com/oldpage.html your apache web server will read .htaccess and look for a 301 (among other things). It will find the line in your .htaccess file and instead of serving /oldpage.html it will send the new page with information in the header saying that this page has permanently moved, code 302, new location xxx.

It's that last bit that is important for Google. It will update its index when it sees the 302 part.

[tazsolmarketing]

itis very important When the search engine spiders visit your old web site
or web pages, they will automatically be redirected to
the new web site or web page.

[jimbo21]

I'm not sure how important it is, but I do know that it is very easy, so I don't see any reason not to. You wouldn't want to lose traffic.

[optimuswarrior]

Hi Jimbo, thanks, I'm new to the 301 redirect thingy so i hope it's easy!


---
I noticed that Wordpress has a few plugins for 301 redirect.

Am I correct in assuming that these help make your .htaccess file for you? Or should I use this and still make a new file concurrently.

Example of a redirect plugin is Redirection - Manage 301 redirections without modifying Apache | Urban Giraffe

(sorry, it may seem obvious to you, but as I said, I'm new to the 301 thing...)


ALSO, HOW SOON should you do this? Or rather, a better question is how much time do you have before Google realizes that the old URL's aren't there and drops you? I ask because I'm making my new site live on the new hosting right now and haven't done the 301 redirect.