PR benefit from permanent redirect

Was wondering if there is any benefit of a link to a page which no longer exists and is permanently redirected(301) to its new location.
Will the new location get any benefit from the BL or not?

This because there are a few sites that link to my old URLs and are not willing to change this.

Absolutely!

When G's searchbots encounter a 301 Redirect, they pursue it and treat the case as if the original link were to the redirect page. Mind, when you put a 301 up, it can take time for the SE proper to "digest" the change, and carry the link PR across accordingly, but it surely will.

Whenever you delete, move, or rename any page to which you even suspect that there are external liinks pointing, be sure to provide an .htaccess-file 301 redirect to a corresponding new page.

If you understand the Apache mod_rewrite module, you can, with a one-line directive, redirect entire directories or even whole sites (or, for example, a change in page naming from .html to .shtml, by page, by directory, or by site).

The mod_rewrite syntax is more complex than its oft-used "little brother", mod_alias (which many people use without even knowing its name), but correspondingly more powerful.

Incidentally, one redirect that every single site around ought to have is from the "non-canonical" site URL to the "canonical" form. For most sites, the canonical form is the one with a leading (though typically unneeded) www. Some, though (like me), prefer their canonical form to be without that silly, needless www.

The choice is personal and immaterial. What is material, dramatically so for SEO purposes, is that a call to any URL whatever that uses the non-canonical form be 301-redirected to the canonical form.

If you haven't set that up, Google will see a call to, for example--

http://www.mywonderfulsite.com/junque.html

--and--

http://mywonderfulsite.com/junque.html

--as calls to two distinct, different pages. Thus, links (internal or external) to one form will be counted as going to one page, and links to the other as going to a second, different page; the conveyed PR is thus sliced up in proportion to the forms used. And, as we all know to our discomfort, we cannot well control how others will choose to supply links to us.

So get those 301s in there.

--
Cordially,
Eric Walker

Now that's good news, thank you!

I tried it and got an alert saying that "redirection limit for this url exceeded....."
I tried redirecting from

http://****.c0m/
to
http://www.****.c0m
and also
http://www.****.c0m/
and also
http://www.****.c0m/index.htm

The silly c0m is because there seems to be a convention here to not post urls

Eric, another great post. We are lucky to have you posting here and hope you visit often. Thanks!