There are a plethora of ways to redirect a potential customer to a new URL. The best way is to use the 301 “page permanently moved” header status code. Another way is to use a “meta refresh” markup tag. There are several reasons why you should use the former rather than the latter wherever possible.
Meta refresh is a meta html tag in your html head section which tells the surfers web browser to get a new file. The meta refresh header tag looks line this:
<meta http-equiv=”refresh” content=”0;url=http://www.google.com”>
This tag should be embedded somewhere within the web pages <head> and </head> tag to become active.
Some online marketers warn against using this html tag! There are three reasons which have been mentioned.
Firstly, meta refresh used to be a favourite technique of Blackhat SEO spammers who would create a keyword stuffed landing page for the search engines, then use meta refresh to redirect real human surfers to a new and less relevent page. For a while sites which did this enjoyed disproportionately high rankings with pretty much any keywords they chose. The major search engines quickly saw what was happening though and banned the offenders from their listings. Even today, meta refresh is still apparently viewed with suspicion by search engines. If you use meta refresh you can not be able to bring your page rank and inbound links over from your old URL or domain!
Secondly meta refresh destroys the back button on older internet browsers. Pressing back moves the site visitor to the page containing the refresh which then returns the site visitor to the page where they started. Some unscrupulous sites used to use long chains of meta refresh pages to drive the user into a deep well from which there was no escape but to close the internet browser or type a new URL into the address bar. Some of these browser softwares are still being utilised at present and for persons making use them, meta refresh is a headache.
Finally, utilising the meta refresh timeout feature is an accessibility issue for potential customers with certain dissabilities. Meta Refresh contains a great feature which allows you to transport the surfer after a short period of time. This is meant to allow surfers time to read your carefully crafted text about how you have changed your name and are now trading under a new identity. For potential customer using screen readers this is an issue because the page disappears without warning, often in the middle of the text and moves somewhere else.
For these reasons I would suggest using 301 transports in all cases where it’s possible to do so.
Technorati Tags: meta refresh, meta html tag, refresh header tag
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