.htaccess rewrite VS 301 redirect

Hello,

I decided to redirect all visitors that were going to a certain location to the root domain. Of course I could have used a 301 redirect to do that, however I decided to use .htaccess Rewrite Rule instead.

Was that a good decision regarding SEO? Or should I change it to a 301 redirect instead?

Welcome to SEOchat!

For websites running on APACHE modules [UNIX], you have to use the .HTACCESS to place the redirects - both 301 and 302 redirects can be implemented through the .HTACCESS.

I would suggest you put your redirecting URL to an online server header check tool such as http://www.seoconsultants.com/tools/headers.asp and check the HTTP Status Code - you might already have a 301 redirect in place.

Hit back if you're still stuck with anything or have further questions

Welcome to the club

Hello, thanks for the reply!
This is the status I'm getting:

#1 Server Response:
HTTP Status Code: HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 2009 12:25:02 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.11 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.11 OpenSSL/0.9.8i DAV/2 mod_auth_passthrough/2.1 mod_bwlimited/1.4 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635
X-Powered-By: PHP/5.2.8
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html

HTTP Status Code - 200 OK

The request has succeeded. The information returned with the response is dependent on the method used in the request.
----------------------
Seems like there's no redirect. The request is treated like succeeded and that's all. I probably better change to a 301.

If that is the server response you get for the redirect - then you most likely have either

1. A Meta Redirect
2. A JS Redirect

...both of which are not favorable methods of redirects. I would suggest switch them to 301.

Let us know if you need any further help

As I said, it's a .htaccess redirect. I guess Google is seeing it like duplicated content...

I agree...

You said " I could have used a 301 redirect to do that, however I decided to use .htaccess Rewrite Rule instead"

The rewrite rule can (also) be used for a 301 rewrite, but that needs to be specified (for instance - adding [R=301,L] to the end of the rewrite line can do it) but - to be safe - you could paste your rewrite code into a post here so we can double-check it for you