Re-designing a website is an exciting, yet all-consuming task. One aspect that is often overlooked is redirecting web pages.
It's very easy to change the structure of your website when you go through the process of a re-design. Every web page on your site has a unique URL. If you don't take proper redirection into account, you can end up with many 404 [Page not found] error pages. Error pages are unprofessional and can often confuse the user, so much so they may leave your site.
For example, xyz.com decides to re-design their website:
- Their former “about” page is xyz.com/about
- On the new site, they want the “about” page to instead say “company”: xyz.com/company
- Without a 301 redirect, a user goes to xyz.com/about and finds only a 404 error page.
Why is this even important?
You might think this is insignificant in the grand scheme of your web presence, but it can be a huge mistake.
If a user has chosen to bookmark a page on your site and you don't redirect them to the new page, he/she will get a 404 error and leave your site.
Inbound links are one of THE MOST IMPORTANT aspects of your web campaign. If you don’t set up 301 redirects when you launch your new site, you will lose all of your old links.
An alternative solution would be taking the time to find all of your inbound links, contacting every single website and asking them to update the links to your site. But that solution could take months depending on how long your site has been online and how many links you have created.
Quick Solution
If, by chance, you have a huge database site with thousands of pages and can’t take the time to do proper 301 redirects, then you can at least create a custom 404 page.
A custom 404 page will often be a copy of one of your interior pages that will include your navigation. You can also include information about why the user has come across a page that no longer exists.
A 404 page supplied by the server looks like this:
“Not Found” doesn't give much help to the user about where they are or where there trying to go.
A custom 404 error page from our site:
From this 404 page, the user can see that the URL is no longer available on this site. Since the user now knows that he’s in the wrong place, he can use the navigation provided to get to his final destination. This 404 error page matches our site and communicates to the user. We’ll even share the full error page.
The Best Solution
301 redirects are the best way to handle movement of pages, both for your users and your search engine optimization. Unlike a custom 404 error page, a 301 redirect will pass link juice to your new page.
The method of your 301 redirect is going to depend on your server. Most servers are either going to be an Apache or Microsoft server.
If you use an Apache server, 301 redirects are a-piece-of- cake. If you don’t already have one, create a .htaccess file and write a few lines of code.
If you use a Microsoft server, 301’s are possible but a lot more time consuming.
Here are a few links to help you out with both Apache 301 redirects and Microsoft 301 redirects.