Development Tip: 301 Redirect Code

I've been spending time tweaking my site using search engine optimization techniques. This post deals with the issue of directing the non-www version of your site to the www one. After reading information on a number of boards, I decided that doing this was a good thing. Several reasons include:

• Lost link value and damage to the ranking of your home page due to duplicate content issues. The answer is to point all versions to a single "canonical" version. More information can be found here under "Canonical Issues & Duplicate Content".
• Avoiding a 301 sabotage. Some people are using canonical domains to sabotage competitors in Google. Better to be safe than sorry.
• Because (to me) it just looks better.

OK. WHERE'S THAT CODE?
Because I have mod_rewrite, the easiest way to do a 301 redirect is to modify the .htaccess file. I use NotePad to edit it.

Several boards listed the following code (or something similar):

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.yourwebsitename\.com [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^$
RewriteRule ^(.*) http://www.yourwebsitename.com/$1 [L,R=301]

I found a very good explanation of this 301 redirection code but after using it and several derivations, all I managed to produce were error pages when I typed in my non-www URL. I finally discovered the problem using an HTTP Server Response Code Checker. This useful little tool showed me problem. I removed the $1 from the above code (portion in red) and now the redirect works!

I'll post more tips as I whip my "get paid" site into shape. ;-)

Cammie

  posted by Cammie @ 1/09/2006 08:33:00 PM