The value of redirects and URLs in SEO
By Wes | July 6th, 2010
Though early on in the internet’s existence we soon discovered the value of URLs, sometimes we need to remind ourselves of these basic things. For any businesses the value of URLs, even if they’re not being used, is something that should be taken into consideration. Think of them like stocks (or maybe more accurately bonds) that are primed to increase in value down the road, or a backup system that you know will come in handy one day. Maybe you young bucks reading this don’t remember the glory days of average joes selling brand name URLs for millions of dollars and then retiring in Belize; I remember it because I was old enough to know what was going on and too broke to do anything about it. Anyhow…
Have them ready to go for a 301 redirect so if you do move your webpage, any users who have your site bookmarked or cached don’t get a 404 error when they go to that now defunct address. Also, it’s a good idea to have numerous TLDs (Top Level Domain) suffixes for your name. This means buying .net, .ca, .org (if you can) or another TLD for your company so that when someone types in www.yourcompany.ca (and your site is a .com) then it redirects it to www.yourcompany.com instead of going to some crappy search engine site you’ve never heard of or produce a 404 error. If you don’t, you risk someone scooping it up on speculation and profiting off of your sudden need to buy it off of them or through ad revenue from making it into that fake crappy search engine loaded with spyware. Or what have you.
Having separate domains for services or products that are particularly popular is a good idea too. Example:
www.yourbusiness.com/particularproduct (original I know) will show up on a search so that customers won’t have to sift through your site to find this particular product.
Or if you have a new product coming out that you’re going to be marketing extensively you should have a separate URL for that product as it’s more direct than having it be a page indexed in your URL or a domain within your site. For example, Thirdi has helped develop a new product called Just the Bill. To have it be Just The Bill brought to you by Thirdi with the product page somewhere in one of the pages on the company site is less direct than to simply have www.justthebill.com and a basic site with all the info on it. The product comes first in this case, the company second. In some cases the company may come first and the product second (as is the case with content based products like news brands or producers who focus on variations of single products) so consider what order works best for your business and product.
From an SEO point of view, 301 redirects (0r 302 which are temporary) are the best way to redirect your URL. For moved pages, search engines will index the new URL, but will transfer your link popularity from your old URL so that your rankings are not affected. 302 redirects are not so great for moving page URLs. These are used through URL Forwarding features that most domain registrars employ. Because search engine traffic is dominated by Google this mitigates the fact that Yahoo or that other search engine Microsoft released a while back (what’s that called again? Bling?) don’t deal with 302 redirects as well. Still 301 is better to use overall though.
Speaking of which, I’m now going to 301 redirect myself out of the office. L8R.
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Related posts:
- SEO Sunday: Link Canonical Tag
- Thirdi SEO Tips: How To Use Anchor Text
- Thirdi SEO Tips & Techniques – Get A Site Indexed With Webmaster Tools
Tags: 301 redirects, 404 page errors, branding, buying domains, eCommerce, eCommerce tips for small business
