The Need of URL Redirection

URL Redirection techniques are employed when you need to make available a certain URL in a various situations, for example: in case you change your domain name, change the location of a certain web page, automatically redirect users to a login or subscribe form and more.

If your visitors click a link for a page that does not exist on your website, they will receive a 404 or Page Not Found error message, meaning that they do not find the respective page. If you want to maintain your visitors and site traffic, you should use a redirection method in order to redirect the visitor to the new location of that page. The simplest redirection method would be to post the new URL link on the same page:




Even though this static method is efficient, in most of the cases, visitors are in a big hurry, so an elegant redirection is provided by the META TAG:


In this case, the META TAG will redirect the visitors to the new page location after 5 seconds, while content="0; will determine the instant redirection of your site users. You should be aware that this META TAG will disable the back button functionality and the visitor could close the web page. You must try not to use this method to manipulate the search engine spider, because it will detect the redirection action and your site could be banned from the search index or you can receive penalties to your site rank.

Another redirection technique, available on Apache webservers is related to .htaccess file. This URL redirection type is server side based and can be used in various situations. It will allow you to redirect a single page or an entire site for example. You can write the redirection code yourself or you can use the control panel offered by your webhosting account to impose the redirection action to a URL. In every situation that requests a URL redirection (permanent or temporary) you should choose the technique with care, because the effect of URL redirection action will reflect upon the search engine optimization of your website and in this way you can lose your site ranking or traffic could be decreased.