When we migrate our customers old websites from Classic ASP to
Umbraco we often get the problem with missing URLs, and sometimes
the SEO ranking drops badly.
The best way to handle this is to use the excellent Umbraco package 301 URL Tracker from InfoCaster.
The purpose of the 301 URL Tracker package, is to create some
SEO friendlyness. Search engines crawl your website and store links
to all pages within your website.
But this is when you have a functionally
Umbraco-setup. And to get http://mywebsite.com/about.asp
to automatically redirect with 301-response to http://mywebsite.com/about-us/
you have to do some tweaks.
This is how we do it:
- Install the 301 URL Tracker package.
- Install URL Rewrite Module from Microsoft.
- Add new IIS URL-rewrite rule to redirect from
about.asp to about.aspx (Only to get Umbraco to pick it up since it
does not handle classic ASP.)
- Set up a 301-rule in the package, use RegEx or map page by
page.
- Youre done!
Step 1, Download an install the 301 URL Tracker
package
Use either the repository or downlad it here.
Step 2, Install URL Rewrite Module
Install the URL Rewrite Module in your IIS (you can install it
from Web Plattform Installer).
Step 3, Add this to the URL-rewrite rules in your
IIS
This is inbound rewrite rule in IIS is to convert the *.asp
extension to a *.aspx. Only to get Umbraco to handle it. The
/redirects/ destination is virtual, so that we can use it
later.
Step 4, Set up rules for the 301-responses in the
package
Log on to Umbraco backend, and go to the 'Settings' section.
Right-click on 301 URL Tracker in the menu on the left and
'Create'. Choose the node that you wish to redirect to.
Ok, here comes the tricky part, you can either choose to use a
RegEx rule to redirect everything to the root node. Or you can map
page by page for best SEO effect. If our case, we map page by page
like this:
We have now set up a rule that redirects the old http://mywebsite.com/about.asp
to http://mywebsite.com/redirects/about.aspx
and then again redirected with the 301-status back to the new
existing node http://mywebsite.com/about-us/.
Does it make sense?
Notes: There are probably a hundred ways to do
this better, but this solution works fine for our customers. If you
have any ideas on how to improve it, please get in touch! I also
gues that you could use this for PHP-pages as well.
Updates: This Blog-post was updated 2011-09-26
when @kipusoep enlightened me that you should use
IIS Rewrite Module instead of Urlrewriting.Net. Thanks Stefan!