301 Redirect using .htaccess

301 redirect is the smoothest and most SEO friendly way to redirect traffic for a domain or webpage. We do this with .htaccess. This will only work on Apache and not on Windows servers.

If you do have an .htaccess file in your root directory, create one and upload in ASCII (text) mode.

To redirect a single page

Redirect 301 /oldpage.html http://www.example.com/newpage.html

To redirect an entire site

Redirect 301 / http://www.example.com/

301 and Search Engine Optimization

From a search engine point of view, 301 redirects are the only acceptable way to redirect URLs.  In the case of moved pages, search engines will index only the new URL, but will transfer link popularity from the old URL to the new one so that search engine rankings are not affected. The same behavior occurs when additional domains are set to point to the main domain through a 301 redirect. If we use Meta-Refresh or delete the page/domain all together, we are loosing those rankings.