Hello, I have a page that ranks well in Google for some term. This page is on my free-host account (in a sub directory) and I want to give all the credit of this page to another one (at another host). So if I use HTML meta refresh tag on the page that ranks well on Google and redirect it to the new page, will Google drop the refreshed (redirected) page from their index and index the new, target page (the redirected-to page) and give all the credit the old page had to this new page so that it inherits the good position/rank from the old page? How does Google deal with meta refresh tags? PS I have to do this via a meta refresh tag as I don't have access to the .htaccess file (this is on a free host).
No, only HTML pages are allowed. This is one of the reasons I am moving to another paid, full-feature hosting. So, will meta refresh work as an alternative to the 301 redirect?
almost. i call meta refresh the "poor 301". set your refresh to 0 seconds, and remove the content in <body></body>, just to be sure (nobody/nothing would see it anyway). it usually works.
If it only supports HTML, and I assume you cannot upload an .htaccess file also, and you can only do a meta refresh, I guess you have no choice then. I used to have a personal site for a long time, and decided to put it down. Then uploaded a resume that all my old pages did a meta refresh to my resume. I did not know SEO back then. But when I learned about SEO, I noticed that my resume was considering links going to my personal pages in the link: command. So I guess the meta refresh does work. But my guess it will work only if it is doing the meta refresh for a very long time. Again, this is only a guess.