301 redirect guru needed - PLEASE

[RobertSeviour]

Google webmaster tools shows that I have
272 external links to my index page url, http://www.seviourbooks.com/ and
91 external links to another page http://www.seviourbooks.com/?hop=0

I have seen somewhere that having backlinks sent to 2 destination URLs has a negative effect on page rank.

Looking around, I read that I could use a 302 permanent redirect to forward the traffic from secondary URLs to the main one. I was thinking of doing this with a line in my .htaccess file.

My question is, where is the page http://www.seviourbooks.com/?hop=0 located? I don't see it anywhere within my domain http://www.seviourbooks.com.

I admit to ignorance about the significance of the '?' in the 'hop' URL. Can I implement the re-direct? Do I really need to?

Thanks for any guidance on this; I saw a decline in my PR a while back and wondered if the issue referred to above has something to do with it.

Robert

[RobertSeviour]

Update: I discovered how to do this at How to Redirect a Web Page Using a 301 Redirect

There are many other sites on the topic but most of them went right over my head. The one above was easy enough to understand that I managed to put the redirects in place in a few minutes. If anyone else wants a little hand holding for doing this, just let me know.

Re-cap - if you have pages with some PR which would be visitors can't find. (Google webmaster tools tells you if there are any) you can send the visitors to the correct page with the info they want with a 301 redirect. It just takes a simple line in the .htaccess file. (Now this means something to me, it didn't yesterday.

Robert

[Mike Adams]

You redirect it by sending http://www.seviourbooks . com/?hop=0 to a redirect page within clickbank and having that page redirect to your homepage. This creates a desired effect, because the the URL that will be displayed will show http://www.seviourbooks . com/ not http://www.seviourbooks . com/?hop=0. Any and all pagerank has already been striped by clickbank, so you don't have to worry about that either.

[RobertSeviour]

Thanks BBP, the .htaccess file I put together seems to be doing what I want. I didn't understand what you meant by <<a redirect page within clickbank>> How / where / what is that?

I found your SEO-Explained-By-Google page interesting.

Robert

[Mike Adams]

You create a page on you site like YourSite.com/redirect.htm. That page is a page that you redirect to YourSite.com. Within ClickBank use YourSite.com/redirect.htm as your sales page. This way when someone sends traffic to you via their ClickBank hop URL they will get credit for the sale and the URL that will be shown in the address bar will be YourSite.com instead of the ugly seviourbooks.com/?hop=0. This will help in conversions because peiple wont feel like they are being "sold" by an affiliate and it looks more professional.

And thanks for checking out my site, hope I can add more value. If you have had any sites, software etc that has helped you in the past, or you use now, email me on my site. http://blackbookproject.net/contact

[RobertSeviour]

Forwards a couple of months: I have this figured now, so if there is anyone out there who has a problem with redirects, I may be able to help. You can email me at robertseviour (at) gmail (dot) com