Tag Archives: seo

Enforce Status Code 301 using mod_rewrite

Posted by cbrunsch on

Common Apache rewrite rules do 302 Moved Temporarly redirects which cause spiders such as Google to fail indexing. Common redirect (status code 302)
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^/$ /anypage.html [L,R]

You must return error code 301 to gain the spider’s favour. Therefore, the mod_rewrite configuration directive must be adjusted appropriately. Permanent redirect (status code 301)
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^/$ /anypage.html [L,R=301] 

Do not get confused by the L flag it just marks that rule as the last rule to be processed and does not affect the redirect behavior.