301 or 302 redirects?

Say a garage selling Robin Reliants has a website at: http://www.rodneysreliants.com but have expanded into sales and customisation of cars like Starsky and Hutch's Ford Gran Torino, James Bond style Aston Martins and Miami Vice Ferraris.

They want to change their URL to something more marketable like:

http://www.carsseenonscreen.com

If the original site was doing well in the search engines having carried out successful Search Engine Optimisation then the site could lose all of its ranking unless the move is carefully managed.

Good redirection
If you are making structural changes to your site and have a good position within the search engines then you don't want to lose this position so redirection is important.

301 directs are the best redirects to use from a search engine's point of view.

Using a 301 means telling the search engines that a page has moved permanently. Then all the historical data/page rank for past pages is transferred to the new pages. Also when mini sites are created to point to the main domain then search engine rankings are transferred to the new sites.

Some domain hosts provide a URL forwarding scheme which is done by a 302 redirect which tells search engines that the page has moved temporarily. Some search engines can't handle this direction and split popularity between the old and new sites rather than recognising the new one.

Contact us for more advice on managing a redirection if you have changed or are thinking of changing your website