Often store owners face the problem when Google search results show links to pages that are not in the store anymore. For example, you deleted an article earlier indexed by Google bot. Google displays those links in its search results, but when somebody clicks on that link, s/he gets an empty page or is redirected to the index page. In this case you need 301 redirect. It will forward the customers who clicks on such links to a page that you point to. Let’s say you had the “Special Offers” cms article, then you deleted it. Now you need to forward your customers to the page where they can see most suitable information for their search clause.
Conclusion: If you delete a page in your store, make 301 redirect to help your customers and search engines to find an alternative page.
The other common purpose of 301 redirect is redirecting your customers from www.store.com to store.com page. It is especially important if you are using https connection on checkout and your SSL certificate is provided for the store.com domain.
Look what happens if you do not create the redirect. Your customer opens the www.store.com site, adds products to the cart and goes to checkout. Due to the fact that your SSL certificate is valid for the store.com domain, the customer gets a warning saying the connection is untrusted.
Most of dynamic sites has duplicated pages. For example, these links open one and the same page:
http://demo.avactis.com/
Using 301 redirects, we can forward all visitors from the second page to the main page.
If you decide to create a 301 redirect in your store, these articles could help you:
http://www.webweaver.nu/html-tips/web-redirection.shtml
http://www.phatz.com/301redirect.php
