Redirects

SEO Black Hat Techniques: What NOT to do

Why are redirects used?

There are many reasons why pages or sites are redirected, including a change of domain name, an amalgamation of pages, site re-design, when web builders want to keep track of traffic passing through the site, and manipulation of search engine rankings. The latter two reasons are seen as unethical; they often result in greatly frustrating users who end up with sites that are irrelevant to their search, inappropriate, and maybe even offensive. Search engines will penalise a site immediately when these techniques are discovered.

Phishing

Another reason some people use redirects negatively is during ‘phishing’. This is an attempt to gain personal or financial information from end-users by misleading them about the site they’re on. Being redirected for this purpose means that you’re at risk of identity theft – it is therefore important to report any such incidents to the search engine as soon as possible. If you’re worried about identity theft, visit the anti-phishing official website at antiphishing.org.

What are 301 redirects?

301s are used to redirect users and search engine spiders when a page or site has been restructured or permanently moved. Google recommends that sites use this redirect only where appropriate since search engines will dismiss the redirecting address and save the address where the redirect points to as the preferred address.

What are 302 redirects?

302 redirects should be used when a page or site is only temporarily at another location. The original address remains the preferred one. Some website owners maliciously use the 302 redirect to promote themselves, but this is risky as search engines will penalise the site when it is discovered.

What is an HTML redirect (meta refresh)?

HTML redirects are used in order to allow for a delay before the refresh is performed. This means that browsers will display the original page for a set period of time (usually a few seconds) before the redirect takes effect and the new page is displayed. Meta refreshes are either undergone so quickly that they are unnoticed by most users or the page is displayed so that users can see both the new and old one.

What are Javascript redirects?

Because the content of JavaScript is generally inaccessible to search engines, embedding a link in JavaScript will redirect the user to a different page than the one seen by the spider. Using JavaScript in itself is an entirely legitimate web practice, but using it with the intention to deceive search engines is not.

Because it shows different content to users and spiders the visitor often ends up somewhere they didn’t intend to go, and the search engines will index the original page rather than following the link.