Setting Up Search Engine Friendly URL Redirects
Many companies use multiple URLs for the operation of their
online business that are set up to redirect to their main
website. The way in which these redirects are set up can
have a dramatic effect on the success of your website on
the search engines.
Two very popular ways in which a URL can be redirected
to another web location are Meta Redirects and a Server
Level Redirects, both can limit your search engine success.
- Meta Redirect -
A Meta Redirect is achieved by placing a Meta tag that simply
tells the browser to move to another web location. This
technique has been massively abused by Internet marketers
to force visitors to places that they did not intend to
go. Because of the potential for abuse to web searchers,
the search engines do not like this method and can penalize
or remove links that use this method. This type of redirect
should only be used when you have no plans for marketing
this URL on the search engines.
- Server Level Redirect -
Server Level Redirects are often used when multiple URLs
are used, but only one server folder or account is desired.
This is many times the case when a shopping cart or database
is set up and it would not be feasible to duplicate the
resource several times on various accounts or server folders.
This method has been discovered to hinder websites from
ranking successfully with many search engines.
The issue with this technique is that each domain name
appears to be a fully functional website under that URL,
which can trigger the search engines spam filters for duplicate
content. For instance, if "marketed-url.com" and
"additional-url.com" are pointing to the same
server folder each link will be appended to that URL. So
when you come in on the marketed-url.com URL and go to click
on the aboutus.htm page the URL will read "marketed-url.com/aboutus.htm,"
however, if you enter in from the URL additional-url.com
the aboutus.htm link will appear as "additional-url.com/aboutus.htm"
as well. To the search engines this appears as two unique
pages on two unique URLs with identical content.
Multiple domains should be set up with unique folders that
"dump" web traffic onto the one URL you plan to
market on the search engines. This will only allow one website
to be indexed into the search engines. We have assisted
several clients in rectifying this situation and have recovered
many lost rankings.
If you believe that you may have URLs
redirecting to your website in this manner,
please contact us at 480-657-7343 and regain your lost rankings
and web traffic.
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