Setting up a 301 redirect.

A 301 Redirect is the most efficient and Search Engine Friendly method for webpage redirection. The server basically sends an HTTP header back to the client browser with an HTTP status code stating that the object has moved along with the new location to find it. There are several reasons for a webmaster to use redirection:

Typing in www.yourdomain.com and yourdomain.com will get you to the same site but you might actually be stealing page rank from yourself. Search engines treat yourdomain.com and www.yourdomain.com as seperate sites. You might end up splitting your vistors in half and lowering your page rank. Instead of having 100 visitors to www.yourdomain.com you could end up with 50 visitors to yourdomain.com and 50 visitors to www.yourdomian.com. The solution for this is to use 301 redirects.

If your site has changed identity. A Web site might change its domain name for several reasons. By using a 301 redirect to the new URL, visitors will still end at the correct page. If done correctly you can redirect a changed web page without altering the Page Rank of the old page. This technique does bear the downside in the delay of an additional request to the original website’s server, but is hardly noticable.

How to:

1) FTP into your hosting account.

2) Look in the root or public_html folders and try to find a file called .htaccess

3) Find the .htaccess file, make a copy of it somewhere for backup. Next, open the file in a text editor.

4) Add the lines to your .htaccess file. This will redirect all traffic to www.yourdomain.com.

RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^yourdomain.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

5) If you changed domain names just point your old domain.com to your new domain.com.

RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^olddomain.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

Test by entering the URL of the old domain into your browser. If you are redirected immediately to the new website address, you have successfully implemented 301 Redirect. when the search engine visits your old web page, it will be automatically redirected to the new web page. The 301 redirect method is considered ethical and white hat. The 301 is the safest and easiest way to Redirect files and also preserve Page Ranksand search engine rankings.

Scott S.

Need a Professional Web Designer - 5 Things to Look For

What you need to know:

1. Qualifications are worthless. Unless the person has a proper graphical design background, almost all of the web design training is learned at a community college part time and not very credible. Unless the person you are qualifying can explain XHTML and CSS to you and why they are good for your website, stay clear.

2. A good web designer will have a diverse portfolio and lots of attractive sites they have built for their customers. They will also be able to explain to you why they designed the site the way it looks. If a person does not have a substantial portfolio, get them to do a first draft design to display their skill to you.

3. Your designer candidate needs to realize that they are building your website for users. This means all users regardless of technical ability and which web browser they are using. Amateur web designers tend to come up with what they think are impressive looking pages while ignoring the visitors who will come to your site. Ask the prospect which browsers they will test the web site on? (Answer: as many as possible) What is the purpose of the website? (Answer: explain the point of the site very simply).

4. Many web designers have no idea what to charge for their services. When you ask, you will get bids form $50 to $5,000. Both of these are ridiculous as one of them may be from a non English-speaking foreigner and the other a committee that will accomplish little. Look for an independent individual as opposed to a corporate type person. Be willing to negotiate the price but never agree to a let them do whatever it takes to make a good site and pay by the hour!

5. Be very wary of any web designer who tries to sell you a whole package such as domain name, web hosting, etc. Most of these types of operations have huge flaws in one area or the other. They will either be web hosting specialists who think designing web pages is easy or designers who are reselling some cheap hosting package for a huge profit. It’s best to buy the hosting yourself.

Keep these five points in mind when looking for that perfect web designer.