To redirect or not to redirect?

A close look at when and when not to use redirects on your website from a search engine optimization best practice approach.

Yesterday I was asked by one of our International clients to help resolve a pressing matter regarding a redirect that occurs on their websites.

As they are an international company with an emphasis of sales in the US, Canada and Europe they run 2 primary websites. One focuses on their US and Canadian markets and the other is targeted to all other countries. They provide hosted and installable time tracking software and project planning software.

Anyhow, the main issue is to do with infrastructure, if a visitor arrives on the US website and chooses to signup for a Free 30 day trial, but they are resident in the UK, the trial needs to be setup in the UK server farm to ensure the very best performance.

A redirect to the UK website when the visitor clicks "Sign Up" is simply not the right thing to do, Google and other search engines can look quite unfavourably on such redirects, so what's the solution?

It all comes down to rules really, the key here is to understand why you need a redirect and what are the other solutions available. So the first thing we do is try to fit the requirement for the redirect into one of these categories;

1. Removal Of Website Content or Change Of Website Address
2. Provide Different Content Based On Criteria
3. Do Something In The Background Depending On Criteria
4. Deliver Different Content Based On Visitors Credentials

So lets break these categories down a little further;

Removal Of Website Content or Change Of Website Address

In this circumstance a passive or temporary redirect is not the correct way to go at all. In both cases, you should get your webmaster to configure a 301 Permanent Redirect.

If you are deleting a page from your website do the following;

• Add the page(s) to your Robots.txt file and ensure that they are also removed from your Sitemap.
• Setup a 301 Redirect from the deleted content to a live page or website area
  • If this is not possible, ensure the web server delivers a custom 404 (Not Found) page to the user. The need for a custom one will provide the visitor with a branded page rather than a default error page which will result in you loosing the visitor for ever.

If you are moving your website to a different domain do the following;

• Create a secondary web-space and label it with 301 or something indicating that it's the 301 redirect site
• Add the old host name (e.g. www.myoldsite.com) to the 301 redirect web-space and remove it from the original
• Add the new host name (e.g. www.mynewsite.com) to the original web-space
• Setup a 301 Redirect from the new 301 web-space to the new host

This will instruct search engines that your web address has changed for good.

Provide Different Content Based On Criteria

This is probably where most people feel the need to redirect visitors. Sometimes the criteria will be the search that the visitor originally did or perhaps the redirection is to do with geographic information or maybe the type of browser or operating system the visitor is using.

In these cases you should try your best to avoid a redirect. Your alternatives for these circumstances are to;

1. Use Ajax or client side scripting to display the alternative copy. Our Keyword Webware is a great tool for delivery of specific page content based on the search terms visitors used to get to the websites we manage.
2. Localize your website using static pages rather than redirects. If someone searches in their local language, they will end up on a localized page. If they drop in to your standard home page, by just typing it in as an example, you can provide the different language options at the top of the page.
3. Most variations in display performance can be managed using CSS (cascading style sheets) and conditional CSS (speak with your webmaster about CSS). If the websites HTML is correctly planned, it is also easy to deliver alternative CSS based on the target platform/browser rather than creating redirects to alternative pages/sites.

The above suggestions assumes your website is either being developed/designed or is fairly new. If you are running a legacy website using old HTML/CSS, you may need to bite the bullet on these points.

Do Something In The Background Depending On Criteria

If your website needs to alter something in the background, for example in the database, or perhaps needs to configure a service in variable locations, a redirect is not the best solution. Speak with your developers and webmaster about setting up a web service or Ajax enabled REST service to manage the background processing. Let the web pages simply negotiate instructions with the server directly rather than redirecting to alternative sites/locations.

Deliver Different Content Based On Visitors Credentials

If you are going to run redirects only when a visitor is logged in, then redirect away! There is no issue from a search engine perspective as the search engine can't see the protected content anyway.

As always, I have tried to keep this high level and as clear as possible. Please drop in a comment if you have a question or if the comments are closed, use the contact link above.