Meta Refresh Redirection

As discussed in portals it is far better to develop your web site content using some form of content management system that will probably store most of the content of your web site in a database, rather than as actual html pages.

One result of this, is that your url's may end up being something like:

http://www.marsjupiter.com/index.php?option=content&task=category&sectionid=8&id=35&Itemid=63

This is not a problem within the boundaries of your site, but does pose a problem for anyone needing to remember how to access particular items.

For the long term, it may also pose a problem for links you want to  be absolutely constant, for example you may want to embed a url in a software product that will always link to purchasing the software. Much the same applies to content in Pad Files whilst it might be quick to update a Pad file, the time taken to ensure that the Pad file is propagated across shareware sites is considerable.

The easy solution to these issues is to use strategically placed, manually created html pages, that use the meta refresh tag to redirect the user to the correct page.

For example on our site, we have:

http://www.marsjupiter.com/callisto/buy.htm

This page contains the following code:

<meta http-equiv=Refresh content="10;url=https://www.regsoft.net/purchase.php3?productid=48350">
<h2 align=center>Buy Callisto</h2>
<h3 align=center>

Which means redirect the user to our secure purchase page after 10 seconds. You can use smaller values, including 0 for instant redirection, but values of less than 10 seconds may not be advisable as discussed below.

Use Server level Redirection if possible

Note that you may be able to set automatic redirections in your sites control panel. If you can then this has the advantage of instant 100% reliable redirection, plus it should avoid the Search Engine Optimisation SEU issues discussed below.

SEO/Search Engine Optimisation issues

It is claimed that use of Meta refresh tags can be bad for your search engine rating. The basis for this is that they can be used to redirect people away from your site or to pages that they did not intend going to.

Sites may also use a technique whereaby the url the Search Engine Spider sees prior to the refresh is loaded with keywords. 

This is certainly a possiblity. But it is also as outlined a perfectly innocent technique. Will a search engine in particular be dumb enough to penalise a redirect to a secure page, or a redirect from a simple url to one with parameters within your own domain?

If you are worried there are a few measures you can take. The main one is to avoid quick refreshes. it has been reported that a ten second wait is needed to avoid penalties.

Another technique is to also have:

<META name="Robots" content="noindex,nofollow">

at the top of the page to prevent spiders indexing the page. If you do this it is important to have the redirected page linked fully from somewhere on your site.

You may also use a javascript redirect:

<SCRIPT language="JavaScript1.1">
<!--
location.replace("http://www.mywidgest.com/widgets.htm");
//-->
</SCRIPT>

Which the theory goes disguises the redirect so that the Search Engine Spider does not notice it. Though we are doubtful about this belief.

This whole issue highlights the problems created if you spend your time, trying to opimise your site for search engines rather than for your visitors! You can waste time that should be going on improving your site, in running round in ever decreasing circles worrying about being penalised by the whims of search engines. We would advise keeping things in perspective:

Will a search engine really penalise you for this technique used legitimately? - Anecdotally maybe!

How much will it effect you, if they are dumb enough? - totally unknown.