Using Page Redirect Manager, you can create page-level 301 redirects to direct your site pages to new page locations. A 301 redirect, also known as a permanent redirect, can be used to help retain a site page's search engine ranking when the URL of a page changes.
For example, if you have an existing page on your site that already ranks well, but have decided to rename the page using keywords to help with SEO, you can create a 301 redirect to redirect the old page URL to the new optimized page URL. A 301 redirect will indicate to a search engine that a page has permanently moved, which helps to transfer the ranking of the old page URL to the new page URL.
You may also wish to create a 301 redirect when a product your store carries has been discontinued, or you've stopped carrying it, but the product page ranks well with search engines. You can create a 301 redirect to redirect the product page to a different product page (for example, if you carry a similar product or the replacement for a discontinued product).
Another case in which you may want to use 301 redirects is when you've moved your site and wish to redirect pages that existed at a different location to their new location. For example, if your site was previously hosted outside of Turbify, and the URL for a page was http://www.widgetdesigns.com/categoryname/itemname.asp, but your new page URL for the same page is http://www.widgetdesigns.com/itemname.html, you can create a 301 redirect for this to help retain traffic and the page's search engine ranking.
A 301 redirect is permanent according to the W3C status codes. This means that the requested URL is designated by the server as permanently moved, as opposed to found -- temporarily moved (a 302 redirect). You can edit or delete 301 redirects at any time. The setting itself is not permanent.
Note: On January 24, 2012, support for URLs including query strings was added to Page Redirect Manager. For example, if you have a marketing campaign landing page that includes a query string, such as http://www.widgetdesigns.com/boots.html?trackingparameter, Page Redirect Manager will now recognize this string information and support the redirect rule for it.
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