I don’t trust GUI’s and this is why. A simple URL 301 redirect was botched by PowWeb’s URL Redirect tool. I had an issue with an error page being among the top content viewed and found an problem with a URL name change conflicting with a PPC campaign landing page target. I knew what had to be done.
PowWeb has a handy set of control panel tools that allow .htaccess editing. The .htaccess editor has a URL Redirect tool that defines the from path as http://… and the to path also as http://… in it’s instructions.
The non-working redirect was defined by the tool as:
Redirect http://www.domain.com/home.html http://www.domain.com
After going through various resources, I found this lovely note that saved my sanity:
“Notes: Don’t add “http://www” to the first part of the
statement - place the path from the top level of your site
to the page. Also ensure that you leave a single space
between these elements:”
PowWeb also has a very nice direct .htaccess editor that allowed me to modify the .htaccess file so I manually changed the redirect to the following:
Redirect 301 /home.html http://www.domain.com
There was no designation for a 301 Redirect so I had to modify the .htaccess file manually. It worked… Check your redirects here - http://www.internetofficer.com/seo-tool/redirect-check/.
Luckily I have FTP access to the Web server but that is not always the case. In using the editor, I found there were actually 3 .htaccess files on the server. I had to ensure I was modifying the correct one and my next phone call to PowWeb will be about having 3 .htaccess files on the server.
Pay close attention to your redirects. Check them. Then check them again.
