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Should I set up a redirect for my home page?

by mfleisch
4 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I recently read that you can improve the number of in-bound links to your home page by redirecting (301 redirect) from Nameofwebsite dot com to ww w dot Nameofwebsite dot com.

My question is whether or not this is true and if so, are you better off redirecting from "ww w dot Nameofwebsite dot com" to "Nameofwebsite dot com" or is it more beneficial to redirect the links coming into "Nameofwebsite dot com" to your ww w domain?
#301 redirect #home #home page redirect #page #redirect #set
  • Profile picture of the author digitalmedia
    Hi Michael

    The 301 redirect is beneficial in that if set up correctly it will combine links that may be pointing to four different urls to one URL:

    www*Nameofwebsite*com
    www*Nameofwebsite*com/*index*html
    http*:*//*Nameofwebsite*com
    http*:*//*Nameofwebsite*com/*index*html

    It will aggregate all the links pointing to the different versions of the domain to just a single url e.g. www*Nameofwebsite*com which will give that specific url more in-bound links if you have links pointing to those other variations because as far as the search engines are concerned these are 4 diferent url's.

    It doesn't make any difference which one you use as the main url ... the important point is to pick one and redirect all the other versions to that url.
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  • Profile picture of the author mfleisch
    Thanks so much "digitalmedia"! That's exactly the answer I was looking for. Can you recommend someone who might be able to set up the redirect for me? I tried to research it online and it looks like all I need to do is create a simple file and upload it to my server but I'm looking for someone who's done it before.

    Thanks,
    Michael
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    • Profile picture of the author Mrs S
      Send me a private message - I have the code but can't post it as it thinks it is a URL and I'm not allowed to post those yet
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  • Profile picture of the author digitalmedia
    Hi Michael

    No problem : )

    BTW you don't have to just restrict this to your homepage. It's good to do it for all pages on your site.

    Below is a good tutorial including the code on how to do it yourself on a linux server using htaccess.

    "www*tamingthebeast*net/articles3/spiders-301-redirect*htm"

    If it's on a windows server the process will be different and depend on whether you have root level access of your own server or shared hosting.

    If you do this yourself then a good tool is at:

    "www*ragepank*com/redirect-check/"

    This will check it has been done correctly.

    As for recommending someone to do this for you ... you could try rentacoder or elance ... or I can recomend my company if thats allowed : )

    I don't have enough posts to send a PM so if you're interested just go to my site from my profile and submit a support ticket.

    But it's pretty straight forward so if you have a linux server you shouldn't have any problems if you follow the instructions on tamingthebeast.

    Regards

    Gordon
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