How to redirect 301 for windows server?

Re 301 page redirect

• Our company has it web site listed in google, we have how taken over one of our retailers but this now means we have 2 web sites on different servers and urls, listed in google both with similar content and now with the same postal addresses. To sort this problem out i have added a 301 page redirect to the site we have took on this points to our main site, is this the right way of going about this. We did not want to shut the site down as customers of the company we took over and other web links still use and link to it ??? I did this by adding a .htaccess file onto the server and it is working. Will this affect my page rank on my main site (lowering page rank). Hope you can help ??

• Answer:

  Hello evergreensuk-ga! This tutorial by Michael Bloch for "Taming the Beast" talks specifically about how the 301 redirect page is the best choice for preserving your search engine ranking: "The 301 redirect is the safest way to preserve your rankings. On the next spidering, the search engine robot will obey the rule indicated in your .htaccess file. The search engine spider doesn't actually read the .htaccess file, but recognizes the response from the server as valid. In the next update, the old file name and path will be dropped and replaced with the new one. Most importantly, the 301 redirect is recognized by the mightiest of search engines - Google." Tutorial - Giving search engine spiders direction with a 301 redirect by Michael Bloch http://www.tamingthebeast.net/articles3/spiders-301-redirect.htm According to this information, it sounds like you've done exactly the right thing in creating your 301 redirect. Google provides information on how changing a URL will affect ranking in its search list: "We cannot manually change your listed address at the exact time you move to your new site. There are steps you can take to make sure that your transition goes smoothly, however. Google listings are based in part on our ability to find your site by following links from other web pages. To preserve your ranking, you will want to inform any sites that currently link to your pages of your change of address. As long as the links change as you move your site over to a new location, your PageRank should not be adversely affected. If your site goes unlisted for a time, this does not mean you were intentionally dropped from our index. Sometimes in these transitions, we fail to find a site at its new address. Just be sure that others are linking to you and we should pick you up on our next web crawl." Google Information for Webmasters ://www.google.com/webmasters/3.html According to this information, as long as you DO include a redirect to your new URL, your ranking should be preserved. Google also provides information on how it links to an "old" page: "If we continue to list an 'old' version of your site (i.e. we continue to list www.my123site.org despite the fact that your site now lives at www.my456site.org ) you need to update the links that are pointing to the sites. Since our robots jump from page to page via hyperlinks, someone must still be linking to the defunct page. Once others correct their links, we can too. Once your new site is live, you may wish to place a permanent redirect (using a "301" code in HTTP headers) on your old site to inform visitors and search engines that your site has moved. One way to determine who is linking to the dead site is to try a link search. You can find instructions on how to do this on our features page. Please note that this process does not work for all of the sites in our index." Google Information for Webmasters ://www.google.com/webmasters/3.html You can use a special Google tag in a search to find out who is linking to your site, or your old site: "Who links to you? Some words, when followed by a colon, have special meanings to Google. One such word for Google is the link: operator. The query link:siteURL shows you all the pages that point to that URL. For example, link:www.google.com will show you all the pages that point to Google's home page. You cannot combine a link: search with a regular keyword search." Google Web Search Features ://www.google.com/help/features.html#link The method by which Google ranks each Web Site is here: "PageRank Explained PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important." Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don't match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for your query." Google Technology, Page Rank Explained ://www.google.com/technology/index.html I hope this has helped and please do let me know if you need any more information before rating my answer. Thanks again, it has been my pleasure researching this for you, and good luck with your additional site! Sincerely, Filian-ga