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Using Application_BeginRequest for a 301 Redirect
Redirecting visitors on your site from one page to another is handled by using either a 301 redirect or a 302 redirect. The numbers 301 and 302 refer to the http status code that is returned by the web server to your browser. They may seem similar but they are quite different. A 302 indicates a temporary change and a 301 indicates a permanent change. This difference is important to understand and will impact how search engines see content changes on your site. There are a number of ways to implement a 301 redirect on your web site. Some are easier than others to configure and will depend on the version of IIS you are using. Here’s the story of how I recently had to use the global.asax and Application_BeginRequest to do a 301 redirect.