Re: 301 redirect using html?
 

2012-11-22 21:20, Jane Galt wrote:

> Is it possible to do a simple HTML 301 redirect without a htaccess file?

No, and it's not an HTML redirect but HTTP redirect. Redirection happens
at the HTTP protocol level and does not even look at the content of
documents, not to mention parsing HTML there.

However, there is a special method of fake redirects: if you put a tag like

<meta http-equiv=Refresh content="0;url=http://www.example.com/foobar">

then browsers generally redirect to the URL given. But this is not
observed by proxy caches, search engines, etc.

If you cannot use .htaccess (it's very simple if it's possible) and you
resort to this technique, add an explicit link into the content:

This page has moved to a new address:
<a href="http://www.example.com/foobar">
Name of the page here</a>

This partly helps, in the sense of letting search engines know about the
new address. But it probably won't make them think it's really the new
address of the same page, like HTTP redirect would. (This is important,
because the age of a page is a relevant positive factor.)

Actually, now looking at
http://support.google.com/webmasters...?answer=139394
I realize that you could additionally use

<link rel=canonical href="http://www.example.com/foobar">

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/