301 redirect issue

[phatmike10]

Hi, I’m doing some SEO on a website that uses a CMS. I’ve identified that the homepage uses 302 redirects. So I need to change these to 301 redirects. I have a sneaky feeling that 302’s have been used elsewhere in the site but as it’s not my site I don’t know where. Is there a way to find this out?

Secondly it’s on IIS so I understand I can’t use htacess so will have to create an include with some conditional code to redirect. If I can’t change the CMS to use 301’s instead of 302’s, if adding the 301 low down in the code processing so that the 301 processes after the 302 code is executed. will the 301 take priority?

Last question! Do I need to delete the code in the page I’m redirecting from i.e. the old page?

Thanks

Mike

[joshz]

Hi, I’m doing some SEO on a website that uses a CMS. I’ve identified that the homepage uses 302 redirects. So I need to change these to 301 redirects. I have a sneaky feeling that 302’s have been used elsewhere in the site but as it’s not my site I don’t know where. Is there a way to find this out?

Secondly it’s on IIS so I understand I can’t use htacess so will have to create an include with some conditional code to redirect. If I can’t change the CMS to use 301’s instead of 302’s, if adding the 301 low down in the code processing so that the 301 processes after the 302 code is executed. will the 301 take priority?

Last question! Do I need to delete the code in the page I’m redirecting from i.e. the old page?

Thanks

Mike

Before getting too technical... What is the CMS? More times than not CMS's have massive plugin/components availability to cure these and similar problems.

[phatmike10]

Before getting too technical... What is the CMS? More times than not CMS's have massive plugin/components availability to cure these and similar problems.

It's Episerver. From doing some reading I think I can set up dynamic pages to change from 302 to 301 in the CMS but where an actual page is a redirect from an old page I think I need to add something like below in each page using an include:
<code> <%
If InStr(Request.ServerVariables("SERVER_NAME"),"www. widgets.com") = 0 Then
Response.Status="301 Moved Permanently"
Response.AddHeader "Location","http://www.widgets.com" & Request.ServerVariables("URL")
End if

CurrPage = Request.ServerVariables("URL")
If Instr(UCase(CurrPage), UCase("default.asp")) > 0 Then
Response.Status="301 Moved Permanently"
Response.AddHeader "Location","http://www.widgets.com"
End if

CurrPage = Request.ServerVariables("URL")
If Instr(UCase(CurrPage), UCase("old-page-that-needs-redirecting")) > 0 Then
Response.Status="301 Moved Permanently"
Response.AddHeader "Location","http://www.widgets.com/new-page"
End if
%></code>

[NathanielB]

I just googled [Episerver 301 redirect] and found this http://world.episerver.com/Modules/F....aspx?id=52347

That sounds like it could be the easiest way for you to find any redirects so you can check which ones need changing, not sure if that can change the redirects for you, but it says in that thread that the mod can delete, edit and create redirects I think?

*EDIT* More info

Did another search for [Episerver change 302 to 301] and this one is an even better fix for what you need http://world.episerver.com/Modules/F....aspx?id=57224

Still worth checking both the links but the last link should be the fix for changing 302 to 301

[phatmike10]

Great thanks for this, a great help. Regarding looking any other pages that are using 302s, as I suspect some might be. Is there a way I can find this out?

[NathanielB]

Great thanks for this, a great help. Regarding looking any other pages that are using 302s, as I suspect some might be. Is there a way I can find this out?

Did you check the links I provided above? Common dude I have done the hard work, all you need to do is read the links and check out what those people have suggested in those threads on the support forum for that CMS!

Hint: Check where "Mari Jørgensen" links to and read what it says in the first screenshot, then come back again once you have read everything and thank me for giving you what you could have found on a silver plate lol

If you can't get it from that hire someone to do the work for you, hell I will even do it for you because you should be able to simply install the mod and search for existing redirects

[phatmike10]

Ha ha, that’s great thank you eternal great one! Ha. For some reason I didn’t read the first link but the second. Teaches me to pay attention! That’s great thanks.
It’s interesting actually this is the first bit of SEO I’ve done for someone else, I’ve been SEOing my on sites for years but have started to branch out. It’s a SME which has an IT department so everything will have to go through them, its an extra layer in the SEO planning process that I’m not used to. Normally I would just implement the code myself, job done.

p.s. the first reply to this post mentioned I needed to block the old URLs in robots. Is this really neccesary, I'd heard of deleting the contents after a few months before but not needing to add it to robots.txt?

[NathanielB]

Ha ha, that’s great thank you eternal great one! Ha. For some reason I didn’t read the first link but the second. Teaches me to pay attention! That’s great thanks.
It’s interesting actually this is the first bit of SEO I’ve done for someone else, I’ve been SEOing my on sites for years but have started to branch out. It’s a SME which has an IT department so everything will have to go through them, its an extra layer in the SEO planning process that I’m not used to. Normally I would just implement the code myself, job done.

p.s. the first reply to this post mentioned I needed to block the old URLs in robots. Is this really neccesary, I'd heard of deleting the contents after a few months before but not needing to add it to robots.txt?

That's ok no problem mate

No don't block the old url's it makes no sense to me why someone would want to do that?! You have redirects setup to tell google the page has moved so once that's done you need do nothing with the old page, 301 redirect = job done