Once again, for about the tenth time in as many weeks, I’ve found redirects on websites made by supposedly good web companies using the wrong kind of redirects and F**king up my clients results when they launch a new website.
All the way through any redesign/development project the most important thing to be aware of is that the new sites first goal is to retain traffic it has and not alienate your pre-existing customers. One of the easiest ways of doing this is to have a redirect plan in place. So that all old URLs redirect to their new locations. If you do this you wont waste PPC budget sending traffic to non-existent URLs, your SEO links and content continue to match up and your rankings are preserverd, your affiliates dont have to change entire websites and campaigns to send traffic to real pages etc.
And guess what every time the developers dont care – more interested in getting faster loading pages than in creating a website which actually works and achieves the clients aims.
Bloody useless swine.
So to all you developers who are cocking up redirects here’s a plan to help you:
- Make list of website URLs before launch (you already have this its called a sitemap!)
- Make a list of all new URLS (it should be in your design notes and if its not make it)
- Redirect all URLs using 301 redirects (either through your .htaccess file (Linux) or through your config file (Microsoft))
- Test the redirects on a test environment – and if your HTTP response code says 302 for the redirects fix it. Don’t leave it. Don’t forget about it. Fix it or I will remove your head with a rusty bread knife
Here endeth the ranting…for today
2 Comments
Mike, you never did like developers !
I do like developers! Just not when they kill websites and make my life so much more difficult.