Javascript redirect vs PHP redirect, which would search engines see as regular content

Question

I'm guessing that using PHP's header("location: here.html") would be much better javascript's window.location("here.html") as far as search engine visibility goes. I would assume that the server redirect would show google the correct content and the javascript redirect would be read as a page with the javascript redirect code in it.

Reason being is I have a client that wants me to take their current website and import it into a CMS system (I'm using e107) and I don't want their old pages to lose their current page rank. I was thinking of putting redirects on the old pages to the new pages in the CMS system.

Answer 1

The only way to forward on search engine rank is with an HTTP 301 (permanent) redirect.

Using PHP's header('Location') will give a 302 unless you specify the code like this:

header('Location: http://....', true, 301);

It might be easier to use .htaccess, like this:

RewriteRule ^old.php /new.php [R=301]

Answer 2

Yes, you want to do server side redirection (PHP) if you can.

<?
Header( "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" );
Header( "Location: http://www.new-url.com" );
?> 

via

You can also do this using

header("location: http://www.new-url.com")

but it won't be as good SEO wise