301 Redirects: protocol for project coordinators and developers
Project Coordinators will need to instruct the developers to create 301 redirects if a page exists on a site, but will be changing its URL.
You must make sure the 301 redirects are done correctly, because if it is not your client could lose thousands of Google views that apply to their search link equity, rendering them essentially starting from scratch, which is quite disastrous from an SEO perspective. You can make a spreadsheet in Excel or a Google doc, or simply list them in LGED. But the essential message must be that there is an OLD URL that will now change to a NEW URL, and the PC (not the developer) is responsible for determining those. There are two main types.
One, the Orenstein model, where the URL is kept, but page names are changed:
OLD: http://www.orensteinsolutions.com/services/teen-psychologist-counseling-therapy/
NEW: http://www.orensteinsolutions.com/teen-counseling/
There is also second type, the Joseph Weiss type, where the URL is completely new:
OLD: http://www.drjosephsweiss.com/contact
Juan Villegas 7:01 pm on December 28, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Technically speaking, developers must make sure that all redirects from A to B are:
-301: if the redirect is permanent and we want the seo juice from A to be passed to B.
-302: if its something temporal, like when a site is under construction and we want to temporarily redirect all visitor to an Under Construction page.. in this case, the seo juice is retained by A.
A good and free plugin for WordPress: http://wordpress.org/plugins/redirection/
In the google chrome console, make sure to see the following after testing a redirect: http://prntscr.com/2enu5l
Dave Boylan 9:09 pm on December 30, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply
a search on “301” under plugins in the dashboard brings up multiple 301 redirect plug ins….fyi.
Juliette Cook 5:31 pm on January 10, 2014 Permalink | Log in to Reply
jane sent this as well: not sure if it somewhere else on the p2 but here is a link about doing this redirect page by page:
http://moz.com/blog/achieving-an-seo-friendly-domain-migration-the-infographic