Redirecting Your Old Pages to Your New Pages

If you are migrating from an existing web site to a new OM4 web site, it is recommended that you redirect your old pages to their new location. For example, your old www.mydomain.com/AboutUs.htm page may now be located at www.mydomain.com/about-us/.

These redirects mean that when anyone requests a page address from your old website, they are redirected to the new page. If this happens from say a Google search result, Google takes note that the page is now located at another location. Over time, Google (and other search engines) will then index these new pages and remove your old pages from their search results.

Using redirects (301 redirects if you need the technical name) is the best way to help Google and other search engines know what has happened when you move pages, and therefore help to preserve the ’search engine equity’ you have have earned.

Planning

These redirects are typically set up when you first migrate your existing web site to your new OM4 web site. With planning you can set up redirects in advance so that your cutover goes smoothly with no ‘404s’ (a 404 is the error code returned when a requested page is not found).

Finding indexed pages

To find out which pages on your website Google currently knows about, visit Google and do a search for the following:
site:mydomain.com
ie site: followed by your domain name (all one word – no spaces).

Setting up permanent redirects

To set up permanent redirects for these old pages, log into your new site’s Dashboard, then click on the Plugins menu. If the Redirection plugin isn’t already activated, then activate it.

Then click on Domains, then Page Redirection.

Return to your Google search results page, then click on the first result for your previous search (http://www.mydomain.com/AboutUs.htm in our example). If the page returns a File Not Found error, then a redirect needs to be added.

Copy the URL of the page that has the error, then return to the Page Redirection screen, and paste it in the Source URL field.

Then find out the URL for where this old page should redirect to (http://www.mydomain.com/about-us/ in our example).

Make sure the type is Simple redirection and the method is 301 Permanent redirect, then click the Add Redirection button.

The redirect should then appear in the redirections list at the top of the screen.

Checking your redirects

Return to your Google search results, then click on the first result again (http://www.mydomain.com/AboutUs.htm in our example). Instead of receiving a File Not Found Error, you should be automatically redirected to the new page (http://www.mydomain.com/about-us/ in our example).

For all other entries in the Google search results that return a File Not Found error, add an appropriate redirect.

Once you’re done, all the old pages indexed by Google should redirect to their new URL.

Over time, Google will discover these redirects and will replace the old (incorrect) URLs with the new URLs. It can take some time to complete, it depends on how frequently the search engines spider your site.