HTTP 301 page redirects in PHP to preserve search engine rankings

Whenever you move, rename or delete a page you lose the hyperlink associated to it. This hyperlink may have been cached by a browser, bookmarked by a visitor or even worse - indexed by a search engine! HTTP 301 response redirect is a method of informing by HTTP response where the page has been relocated to using a Location header. The beauty of this method is that it is formal, transparent and exact - so the link indexed by the search engine will still point to the new page. This will help to preserve your search engine ranking and make sure that you don't "fall off" the SERPs. Please see below for an example of an HTTP 301 redirect in PHP:

<?php header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently"); header("Location: http://www.new-website.com/new-page.html"); ?>

Back to Web Development Articles.