please don't reply to this if you don't run apache/linux, don't know what a 301 redirect is or don't know what you're talking about... this is a serious question.... Ok... I have a domain with a PR4 landing page at - http://www.mydomain.com ...and have a PR3 blog at - http://www.mydomain.com/blog/ ...and a PR3 forum at - http://www.mydomain.com/forums/ I would like to nix the landing page and 301 redirect either the forum or blog to the root level of the domain. My question is, will I lose PR or backlinks if I 301 redirect one of the subfolders up to the root level??? Or, is there some way I can combine the inbound links through a 301? I know how to do .htacces 301 redirects easily, so my question is esoteric, I'm just asking if anybody has an experience in a similar issue on how to retain the higher PR. I recently experimented with one of my webhosting clients sites and moved his former /blog directory to document root and Google picked up on the 301's immediately *but* he added a new domain name and we did the 301 through GoDaddy. So, What I'm wondering is if I should pass the 301 from the Pr4 landing page into the forum/blog "or" should I 301 redirect from the PR3 blog or forum into the PR4 landing page ??? I'd like to keep the PR4 from the docuent root, but that page is useless at this point ... Any knowledgable comments would be much appreciated and I'll toss a PR4 backlink at the person who gives me the best advice. Thanks !! Dave
Redirecting the homepage to another page changes the PR. The PR is invalid though. So if you redirect your home page (PR4) to the blog or forum (PR3) the homepage would show up as PR3, but the rank would be "forged". But still considered a PR4 I have been told that forged page ranks can be changed after PR updates. So if you took the redirection off, by the next PR update, it should go back to PR4 if everything stays the same. (backlinks, SEO ect.)
Thanks for th equick reply longhornfreak. btw, I'm using SMF and Wordpress for the blog and forums, and I have 301 permalinks on the WP blog and i'm scared to move it for duplicate content issues. The SMF is using "web friendly" links but it's heavily trafficed so Pr doesn't matter so much. The blog has the most backlinks (11,800), but the landing page has been there longer so it has a higher PR. The blog is my most vital part of the domain (it should be PR5+ next update) so I guess maybe the best solution would to be to leave the PR4 landing page and leave the blog and forums where they are and just get rid of the content on the landing page that's unwanted. Could you please PM me for the domain so you can check it out. There's a specific reason I want to kill the landing page but I'd rather not post the link to the site because I don't want to seem like I'm spamming. Again, I'll either give a BL or write a review of your site for helping... (or trade some PHP code [I'm a programmer]).