When I first made my website about a month ago, I made all the pages .htm. But then this week I changed that to .php so I could change the header and footer in a separate file.
I setup a 301 redirect for each page in my .htaccess file. I also changed one page from Promotions to Services and set a 301 redirect for that too.
My question is if I should leave those 301 redirects there forever? Or is there some amount of time that they need and then I can remove them?
[FONT=Verdana]Do you mean 301 or 302? Your title says one and your post says the other. 
It doesn’t now - I edited it for the sake of clarity. 
302 is a temporary redirect, so you leave it as long as necessary - until the temporary situation changes.
301 is a permanent redirect. If your page has changed permanently, then you want to leave the redirect there permanently, so that any incoming links from other sites that point to the old page are automatically redirected to the correct new page. As your site was only online for a month, you may not have any links to your .htm pages, or they may be so few that you can contact the relevant sites and ask them to update their links. In that case, you could probably safely remove the redirect once you’re sure Google and the other search engines have updated their links. Personally, I’d just leave it permanently. Having it there if it’s not needed won’t cause any problems; not having it there if it is needed might. :)[/FONT]
Sorry, I meant 301. The title is a typo
302 is a temporary redirect, so you leave it as long as necessary - until the temporary situation changes.
301 is a permanent redirect. If your page has changed permanently, then you want to leave the redirect there permanently, so that any incoming links from other sites that point to the old page are automatically redirected to the correct new page. As your site was only online for a month, you may not have any links to your .htm pages, or they may be so few that you can contact the relevant sites and ask them to update their links. In that case, you could probably safely remove the redirect once you’re sure Google and the other search engines have updated their links. Personally, I’d just leave it permanently. Having it there if it’s not needed won’t cause any problems; not having it there if it is needed might. :)[/FONT]
Excellent, makes perfect sense. Thank you!
[FONT=Verdana]
That’s OK - I’ve amended it in case anybody else is looking for the same information.
Glad I could help. :)[/FONT]
Hi Guys, can anybody tell me if we 301 redirect the page, do all the links to that pecific page also get redirected? and if it is a 302 redirect what happens then?